Ramblings From The Cloud

For much of the time this runs at the top of the ridge parallel to “The Pilgrim’s Way” which tends to be at the bottom. Occasional the two merge, mainly when the North Downs Way descends from the crest.

The “Pilgrims Way” is a strange construct, supposedly a medieval route to Canterbury. However, the nearest there is to a contemporary guide, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, shows the way from London to Canterbury to be via Dartford and Rochester.

The North Downs Way does get close to Rochester, approaching from the South West rather than North West from Dartford, before turning away from Chaucer’s route to head to Folkestone and Dover.

The “Pilgrims Way” was invented in 1871 by a Victorian map maker who added the name to the Ordnance Survey of Surrey. Like much of English tradition, this Victorian fiction now passes for historic fact. The claim is that the route was used by pilgrims from St Swithun’s shrine at Winchester to Becket’s at Canterbury has very little evidence.

Recently I was in the Chilterns for a map reading course run by the excellent Wildfire Navigation I don’t often walk in this area and found myself near two other “ancient trackways”: The Ridgeway and the Icknield Way. As with The Pilgrims Way there is very little evidence to support their claims for great antiquity and much of the Icknield Way is clearly of eighteenth and nineteenth century origins

The problem is that is generally impossible to date a trackway so a pre-historic ridgeway or holloway can not be distinguished from an eighteenth Drove Road. A rare exception to this is the Sweet Track across the Somerset Levels which can be dated to 3800 BC because of the wood used in its construction (as can be seen at the British Museum’s current “The World Of Stonehenge” exhibition).

The difficulty is dating the “ancient trackways” that make up much of Britain’s long distance walking routes makes research into these trackways unproductive. As a result the only significant investigation remains Christopher Taylor’s “Roads and Tracks of Britain”, first published in 1979.

Still these claims to ancient origin are good for the tourist trade and enables obvious signs to be attached to way post.

There is also some real history along the route. The most significant being the line of World War 2 pill boxes which would have formed part of the last line of defence for London