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The West Dorset Magazine, June 17, 2022
Health & Wellbeing
Walking West Dorset
with retired Dorset rights of way officer Chris Slade
FROME VALLEY TRAIL: 7th WALK This is a six mile circuit and parts of it are soggy so you might wish you’d worn wellies. Park on street at West Hill, Charminster and walk west to join the A37 which has a pavement/cycle track that takes you south to a roundabout at which you take the first exit. All the land on either side is Access Land which you are allowed to explore on foot. After a while you’ll see a blue road sign stating that there’s parking in half a mile. Cross the road here, enter the water meadow and head towards the large bridge taking the railway line over the Frome. When you get to the riverside you can enter the fenced off anglers’ path and follow it downstream towards Dorchester below the north bank of Poundbury Hill Fort. Old maps will show you the public bathing place on the other side of the river. It’s on Access Land but difficult to get to nowadays. I’m told that the water’s quite deep
there. Carry on until you get to the weir at the former West Mill then turn left and shortly scramble up onto the road near Spar. Turn left past the garage, cross the bridge then turn right and follow the riverside path. I sometimes went for a lunchtime swim there in my working days. At the end of the path turn right then, at John’s pond, left and follow the path down to the White Hart, possibly diverting for a short circuit around the Local Nature Reserve. Cross the main road and take the path for about a third of a
mile taking you down Mill Street where I remember my relatives had no electricity but did have gas lighting. Cross the road by the bridge and enter the playing field which has recently been planted with hundreds of trees each with a plastic! wrapper. Follow the boundary of the field which is alongside the Frome until you get to the kiddies’ play area. There’s an old steam roller there, the chimney of which I stood on in about 1960. Rejoin the road, cross Grey’s Bridge, turn left along the path that takes you past the old swimming pool, over the
hatches and past a cottage. Then join a path leading west past Coker’s Frome Farm through a couple of fields until it joins a track by a ford. Turn right and head north to join a road where you turn left and go west for a quarter of a mile and join a path to the left that takes you south west past a pumping station and across a field to join the road at Lower Burton, just north of the Sun Inn. Take the path westwards through the Ilchester Estate yard and head north west across a couple of fields, the site of a medieval village, to Wolfeton where a path takes you north past some old cob walls to join the road at Charminster. Turn left and go down to the Church, diagonally across the Churchyard and up an alleyway to join the A352. Turn left then right, passing (or pausing at) the Three Compasses and soon you’ll be back at your car.
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