Cranborne Chase and Winkelbury

The wrinkled landscape of Cranborne Chase is never boring, so wide ranging and varied as it is. It's a country landscape, of fields and hedgerows, scrubby woodland and coppice sheltering in its combes, rising above them exposed chalk grasslands reach for the skies, little changed in centuries, I'd imagine. Today was a good day for a walk in the chase, clear skies, an unseasonally warm feel, walking with an old friend who I don't see enough off (in fact the last time I saw him was last year, when we wandered the Chase). Our route was an undulating one, up through Garston Wood, with it's well managed Hazel coppice, down through Mistleberry Wood, up into Chase Woods following the Shire Rack, past Cuttice Lodge and up on to the Ox Drove, with it's fantastic views over four counties and on a good day as far the Isle of Wight. Man, it's always amazing to be up here, but on a clear day like today, it's something else.  We took a slight detour to wander about Winklebury, an Iron Age Hillfort positioned on a promontory overlooking the Berwick St John at the head of the Ebble Valley. It was excavated by Pitt-Rivers at the end of the 19th century who found evidence of Iron Age occupation, though I question whether it was a finished hillfort, it's defensive ramparts and ditches lack uniformity in nature and appear incomplete. The most striking features are the two linear outer ramparts and ditch defences some way from the main enclosure, which cut off the promontory.  The Chase is jam packed with archaeological features, it's always been a popular landscape. We made our way back down through Chase Wood, this time following the ups and downs of Chase Avenue, a neglected veteran Beech avenue, back through Mistleberry Wood with another Iron Age 'fort' which appears either incomplete or simply not a fort (I do wonder about some of the old Ministry of Works definitions of archaeological sites, several in the area appear suspect), before finally returning to Garston. Fantastic walk, longest I've done in a while too (12 miles of walking and talking), I've been slacking of late, must try harder.