Blackmore Vale Path

The Blackmore vale path is a circular 75 mile path in Dorset that I discovered when looking for 4 day walks just after the covid-19 lockdown. We pushed the pace on this and ended up doing most of it in three days with some shortcuts (avoiding Blandford, Yeovil and Dorchester) but its probably a more pleasant 5-6 day walk.

It's circular nature meant not having to infect or be infected by others on public transport and we simply drove to one of the villages en route. I suspect the official starting point is Blandford.

75 mile circular route around Dorset

I couldn't find very much information at all about this route before starting, just a GPX file and a route map from the long distance walking association website. I have the knowledge that a pamphlet was once produced but doesn't seem to be in print.

Reasons to do the walk

- being circular makes for easy logistics

- nice traverse of inland Dorset with views over hills, vales and pretty villages

Reasons to pick another walk

- A fair bit of road walking from Sturminster Newton to Sherborne

-It uses lesser frequented paths and this can be quite obvious at times from the volume of nettle stings endured and amount of bushwhacking required.

-Sometimes deviating from the official path makes for a nicer route.

Logistics

The main towns on route with train stations and decent bus links are Dorchester, Yeovil, Sherborne and Blandford so these would make for the best starting points.

This could easily be done walking from one B&B to the next. There are a few campsites on en route but it might be a little trickier to camp in official sites each night, but there are a fair few woodlands and farmers fields that could accommodate a wild camper if you set up late, packed up early and most importantly leave no trace. There are enough towns on route to pick up food in local shops near daily.

Maps - we used the OS Maps app on our phone and find it excellent (you can upload the GPX file to the app and follow it) but obviously the OS paper maps are also great and a handy back up.

Possible Itinerary (6 days) - approx distances in miles

Blandford to Sturminster Newton 13
Sturminster Newton to Sherborne 15
Yeovil to Cerne Abbas 15
Cerne Abbas to Dorchester 10
Dorchester to Milton Abbas 15
Milton Abbas to Blandford 7

Skipping Blandford & Yeovil (5 days - 65 miles)

Dorchester to Milton Abbas 15 miles
Milton Abbas to Sturminster Newton 12 1/2 miles (skipping blandford)
Sturminster newton to Sherborne 15 miles
Sherborne to Cerne Abbas (skipping Yeovil , going through Bradford Abbas) - 18 miles
Cerne Abbas to Dorchester - 10 miles

Helpful planning distances (very rough distance from place to place)
Tolpuddle
Milton Abbas 6
Winterborne Stickland 3
Blandford 4
Okeford Fitzpaine 9
Sturminster Newton 4
Stalbridge 7
Sherborne 8
Yeovil 5 1/2
yetminster 5
Cerne Abbas 10
Dorchester 10
Tolpuddle 9

Below is a rough guide to our walk detailing some of the facilities in each town, we walked anti-clockwise

Tolpuddle

Facilities

• No formal accommodation but a few airbnbs
• No shop
• River if you need water and are happy to treat it

Some bushwhacking required after crossing the a35 then after about 3 miles you get to Dewlish. A small village, has a stream but no formal facilities, again airbnb could be an accommodation option if needed.

From here ascend a hill and you then descend into the idyllic Milton Abbas (6 miles from tolpuddle) where nearly every house is thatched and there must be a decree house owners sign to ensure their gardens are immaculate at all times before they are allowed to live there. Apparently it was one of the first planned settlements in England and it was designed by landscape gardener Capability Brown and arichitect William Brown in the 1770's.

It's a bit of an uphill slog through the village but the village cafe, shop, and pub might slow you down (unfortunately for us, all closed because of covid). The pub does accommodation when it's open and we saw a few signs for B&Bs. If looking for water there is a reservoir here but it's seems heavily guarded by fishermen. 

After Milton abbas the Blackmore Vale path joins the jubilee trail for a while, making navigating less intensive. The trail through charity woods makes for good marching ground and one could make a discreet camp here. 

You then come to Winterborne Stickland, (just over 3 miles from milton abbas) yet another cute Dorset village with a fine church and Manor house. Apparently borne means stream and said stream should only be present in winter, but we found that it was still flowing in July. This is no guarantee to find it again another summer, but it was still running was after a very dry spring. Winterborne Stickland has a pub - The Crown and there may be a B&B (westwood lodge but its website is currently down).

At Winterborne Stickland we deviated from the official route - as we didn't start in Blandford and had no need to go there. It's about 4 miles from winterborne stickland to Blanford and then 4 miles back to the route.

Therefore we left  this village to the north on a pleasant rising plain with good views back to the village, still on the jubilee trail. Another set of woods, the field Grove and then you leave the jubilee trail to continue north. Through Bosley Common and then on to Okeford Hill. We hadn't noticed the gradual incline we'd tackled so the views from this hill were a glorious surprise. 

We descended into Okeford Fitzpaine, (5 and a bit miles from Winterborne Stickland if skipping out Blandford) this village has a pub, the Royal Oak, a post office with little shop and a stream to fill up water bottles from, or as we found, helpful locals who may also oblige. There is also a campsite to the west of the village (camping & caravanning club - for which you need to be a member)

From Okeford Fitzpaine its nearly 4 miles to Sturminster Newton, initially climbing a gentle rise and then back down into the town. This is an old market town with a selection of shops, that recognises its connection with the Blackmore Vale. It's apparently been around since 1272 and there is a 15th century over the river that Thomas Hardy once wrote about. A lot of this walk is around where Hardy lived and wrote about. There are plentiful facilities here - a bakery, we can highly recommend the butcher come deli as well as pubs, a fish and chip shop, indian, pizza takeaway, co-op. The Swan Inn provides accommodation.

From Sturminster Newton we found it a boring slog on roads to Stalbridge, around 7 miles away, these were quiet but remained tiring on the feet and if we'd planned it better we'd have probably used OS maps to utilise more local footpaths. Stalbridge is a small place, but not too small to have its own flag (!), a nice church and some thatched houses. There is a post office selling a few supplies here but little else. Try airbnb for possible accommodation.

Around 2 miles from Stalbridge is Stalbridge Weston a small collection of houses and one of the most impassable paths that we encountered on our walk. Around an hour of nettle whacking and swearing later we got back onto a clear footpath, but for around 500 metres we expended a lot of energy clearing and getting stung by various forms of overgrown pointy shrub. We suggest avoiding this path if you possibly can (we would have done, except for having navigated some of the nettles, we didn't wish to retrace our steps and give them the satisfaction of stinging us a second time).

8 miles from Stalbridge lies Sherborne. This is another larger market town, with an impressive castle to the east with a well maintained deer park adjacent but also lots of threatening signs telling you to stay on the path. Sherborne has everything you might need - accommodation, food (we can highly recommend Ecco-gelato for ice cream, even though it was very cold whilst we were eating them) and a big Sainsburys. It looks like a town that specialises in art, antiques and cafes and would be a nice place to mill about for an afternoon. It's Abbey is also quite grand and it apparently has its market on a Thursday.

The photo below is sometime after Sherborne, a farmer had added extra barbed wire to the stile, that we had to climb through whilst avoiding some very interested cows.

From Sherborne it's around 5 and a half miles to Yeovil. This is a large town, that creeps into Somerset, with good transport links to Bristol and London via rail so a potentially good place to start, It has all facilities that you could want. We skipped Yeovil as we didn't fancy the road walking and instead cut through the cute village of Bradford Abbas. Abbas is Latin for Abbot and why many of the places on this route are suffixed Abbas.

The next place of interest is Yetminster - as always is has a nice church, the whole village is made from yellow sandstone and it also has a pub -the white hart, a few accommodation options and a SPAR. Its about 5 miles from Yeovil.

From Yetminster you get to the small village of Leigh, this was a trudge again on roads and in future I would have avoided these by using other footpaths maked on OS maps. Leigh has a post office / village store. Where we did try and take a footpath east from Leigh, there was a sign saying there wasn't a bridge allowing access to Hermitage so we elected to do more boring road walking. The road gradually ascends and then you get onto a track with fine views over Minterne Magna that has a fine country house and gardens and down into the Cerne valley.

On top of 'giant' hill there is a campsite and there is also a glamping place down in Cerne Abbas itself. We were slightly disappointed that altough the path takes you directly below the cerne abbas giant you get a very poor view at his feet and you'd get a better one from the other side of the valley. Cerne Abbas itself obviously benefitted from giant tourism and was one of the only places we saw people all day. It also has a tearooms (a very welcome stop and opportunity to eat out - the first proper time we did since covid lockdown), shops, 3 pubs and potential accommodation. Whilst some claim the giant is 1500 years old, the first mention of it is from 1694, and his giant member may have only become out of proportion around 100 years ago. Cerne Abbas is about 10 miles from Yetminster.

The path then takes a nice course adjacent to the river Cerne, apssing adjacent to Nether Cerne and Godmanstone, before heading out into open rolling farmland with walks around field borders and good views for many miles - including to Dorchester. Dorchester is about 10 miles from Cerne Abbas and makes another good base for a night, with plentiful restaurants, shops and several accomodation options.

The final segment of path goes through Puddletown Forest, where Hardy's cottage is located and it's then around 9 miles to Tolpuddle, which has another cute collection of thatched houses and a nice church but very few facilities.

Feel free to get in touch if you want any more information about this slightly esoteric Dorset walk! 

Bibbulmun track - The End

Continuing on from where our last post ended, we walked the final day from  Mutton Bird shelter to Albany.

The day had a generally melancholic feel. We appreciated the first half of the day, along an isolated track with beautiful coastal views. The second half was following a flat tarmac cycle path, that lined the Princess Royal harbour into Albany. This was a bit of a trudge through some of the industrial areas of Albany and did not endear us to returning to civilisation. Actually upon entering the town centre, the old Victorian era buildings had a grand charm and it was yet again amazing to have a shower. As a fitting end to our trip we celebrated with drinks on the waterfront, alongside another end-to-ender David, watching the sun set over our achievement.

On setting out on this journey, we hadn't really factored in the social side of the walk. Whilst we predominately walked alone and rarely saw another sole on the track, at the shelters there were normally a few other people staying the night. Some people followed a similar schedule to us for weeks, so we formed unlikely friendships and others stayed just overnight. In total we only had one shelter to ourselves, which I suspect is lower than average. Being alone for days on end would have given us more of a wilderness feeling, but I suspect it may have also increased the chances of Callan and I getting sick of each other too!

Obviously we're both pleased to have completed the Bibbulmun track, as it is the longest walk we've ever done. However we've really grown used to our simple walking routine and the sudden jolt back into urban life did feel a little abrupt.

Interestingly, I thought I would come away from this trip feeling very fit and thinking that we would be able to walk 25 miles a day or more with relative ease by the end. Actually because we had allowed ourselves plenty of time in which to do this walk, it has not been necessary to push ourselves that hard - we averaged just over 15 miles a day. This has given us time to stop when we see a beautiful bird, paddle in streams and generally appreciate our surroundings. My competitive psyche still crept in from time to time, with the feeling that walking 1000km should be hard and therefore we should suffer somewhat. This manifested itself in a fair few days of over 20 miles, but I think our longest walking day was probably only 10 hours long.

On the Bibbulmun Track Foundation website they suggest planning your walk to take as many days as possible so you have time to appreciate the scenery. This was definitely not my feeling before this trip, where I felt that the quicker you walked, the greater your achievement. Overall I think our speed was a good balance of challenge and relaxation and allowed us to finish in fairly good nick. I'm not sure if I was ready for the walk to end, but it means that we'll still have some enthusiasm if someone suggests going for a walk and I suspect it won't be long before we start planning our next trek.

The Final Section - Denmark to Albany

It turns out that Denmark is surprisingly large, both in terms of its enormous (and spaced out) suburbs and its general store. We stayed at the 'Blue Wren Traveller's Rest (aka the YHA) which had a washer/dryer and no requirement for police callouts, putting it 1-0 against the Walpole YHA in the acommodation stakes. Other excitements were the pub (functional) and the bakery (and cafe, it would seem) where we ate evening and morning respectively. Due to an order mix-up at the bakerycafe, I ended up with a colossal bacon mountain consisting of about 10 giant rashers after Katie received bacon with her egg on toast. I am not certain that I've ever previously been overcome by bacon, but it seems there is a first time for everything.

Irritatingly, the Bibbulmun track doesn't run contiguously around Denmark, necessitating either a ferry ($160 minimum for four people, person who runs it often away) a trek across a sandbar (backtrack 7km, hope the sandbar is intact, bushwhack for several km on the other side to get to the track) or get a lift around ($50 for a car-full). We opted for the latter, but it doesn't feel great to have to grab a lift to continue walking particularly when the rest of the track has been so good.

The gradients have calmed down throughout this last section, and the walking feels easy. There are huge tracts of sea views and the rest of the time is spent walking on the beaches (good at low tide when the sand is firm, terrible at high tide when you have to walk on the deep soft stuff at the top). The sea is glorious here - a true aquamarine where it meets the white sand fading to deep blue as you look further out. The beaches are occasionally populated but often there were kilometres of beach where we saw no-one at all.

This morning I had my adrenaline fix for the trip when I trod on a snake lying in the path. Fortunately for me it was relatively small and I trod on it in such a way that it could not get around to bite me. Fortunately for it I also didn't break it, and when I jumped away half a second later swearing to high hell it simply made a break for the bushes and vanished. The rest of the day was spent suspiciously eying up sticks and twigs and shadows and letting my imagination turn them all into snakes, which was just as much fun as it sounds.

We have made it safely, snakes included, to our last shelter - Muttonbird (Australian naming always puzzling). I am writing this sat at the picnic bench in the shade cast by the shelter roof, and looking out over the sunlit Australian bush. There are some of the ever-present flies, and a cricket in the vegetation somewhere to my right chirping away. There are wildflowers in pink and blue everywhere, and Katie is sat out in the sun reading, her phone charging off the solar panel. It's going to be a great loss as well as a triumph to get in to Albany tomorrow and finish off the track that has been our home for the last 39 days. There are certainly things I won't miss - the normal flies, the march flies, the mosquitoes, the sudden shock of standing on a potentially lethal reptile - but there is something wonderfully simple and straightforward about a life where you just walk, and get in at the end of the day to good company, then eat and sleep and walk again.

I don't know the date or the day of the week, but today is day 39 and I've got walking to do tomorrow.

Bibbulmun track - 8th section - Walpole to Denmark

We left Walpole after a disturbed nights sleep; there was a ridiculous domestic row at our hostel and the police had to attend. It took them about 20 minutes to attend despite the police station being only 100 metres away.

Walpole inlet

Our walk out of walpole was much nicer with views towards the inlet and the coast, before leading us back into the forest. People may have gotten sick of us talking about the majestic Karri trees over the past few posts, be reassured we will finally stop talking about them. Instead I introduce you to the Tingle tree. Where the Karri are impressively tall, the Tingle are massively wide (up to 25 metres around) and also frankly ridiculous. Some of them are over 400 years old and as they become half destroyed by bushfires and fungus they hollow out into amazing structures. 

The Giant Tingle

We spent the day gawping at these trees from above and below as we also went on a tree top walk along swaying platforms 40 metres in the air.

Unusually intact tingle

Our second day on this section was incredibly varied. We started in tingle forest, then gravitated towards some slightly eerie burnt woods where all the trees were dead, leaving a low level of regenerating grass. We then travelled through sand dunes with wildflowers to the rugged beach, where we could really appreciate the power of the southern ocean. As an added bonus to the day we finished at peaceful bay - a caravan park with showers and a fish and chip shop!

Our third day was been more coastal and therefore more undulating. It felt like one of the harder days on the track, where one step up meant half a step back as we slid down the sand dunes. The flies also have a strong presence in the open heathland meaning our head nets were yet again essential. We were rewarded for our efforts with another 'proper' campsite, meaning that we could have showers two days running - luxury!

Sunrise on Parry beach

Knowing that the rain was coming in in force on for our final day into Denmark we elected to get up early (for sunrise, to be exact) to walk for as long possible in the dry. Difficult as it was to get up, the sunrise was glorious and we about 5 hours of walking in before the weather front hit us going down mount Hallowell. We arrived in Denmark sodden but pleased for the luxury of a bed.

View down into Denmark before the rain properly came in

It's odd what we've missed and haven't really noticed on this trip. Our number one luxury is a hot shower, they feel so amazing at the end of a section. Chairs with backs are also a longed for treat. We have also gotten sick of food that can be cooked on our stove, mainly boiled carbs - pasta, rice, noodles & cous cous. Consequently in towns we find ourselves craving meat, fried food & vegetables. We haven't been too bothered about the lack of flushing toilets, lack of proper mattresses, only having one outfit of clothes or our general state of grubbyness on the trail.

Bibbulmun track - 6th section - Pemberton to Northcliffe

Length 37 miles - 3 days walking

Our rest day in Pemberton allowed us to live the high life for the day. We arranged transport to a truffle and winery; drinking a trio of wines with a selection of truffle products over lunch certainly made a change to pasta/rice/noodle dinners. We also made use of the campsite bbqs, to have some burgers in the evening. 'BBQs', actually gas powered hot plates are ubiquitous on this trip, no town would be complete without a few public ones available.

Getting back to the trail I was incredibly excited for the Gloucester tree after reading all about it in the museum in Pemberton. 50-100 years ago some of the massive Karri trees were converted into fire lookouts by creating a ladder of iron bars nailed into the trunk. Miraculously the Australian authorities still let you climb one of these old trees - 53 metres tall without any harnesses or safety equipment. Despite the drizzle this was an amazing experience, not for the faint hearted though.

The trail also took us by some cascades that we're picturesque and serene. Less peaceful was the rabble of year 10 school children awaiting us at our nights shelter. Whilst they provided some entertainment with their ineptitude of putting up tents, it wasn't conducive to a chilled afternoon. There are also over 200 other school kids in the area over the next 10 days that we are likely to encounter!

The highlight of our second day was getting to some more cascades in the river and taking a dip. This was harder than it sounds as the water was fairly shallow so you needed to sit down to be submerged. Shocking to all that know him, Callan got in further than I did. Our final day was a shorter 3 hour walk to Northcliffe. On a walk as long as this, one of the joys is noticing the subtle changes in the landscape day by day: now fewer Karri, a more sandy soil and more open plains. A precursor of terrain to come.

Northcliffe itself was a small town. Our main priority was finding enough to do before we could check in to the hotel for a shower. We explored the town twice and went to the sculpture park - it wasn't the most inspiring at but tided us over until our room was ready. Other mildly interesting things that happened were that upon finding out that Mike couldn't get a bus from Northcliffe to the coast the next day, the lady in the tourist office helpfully suggested that he could walk back to Pemberton (37 miles and 3 days walk) to catch the bus from there tomorrow morning! It's been nice to have Mike's company for the past week and it's a shame he didn't quite have time to join us on the next leg.

There was also a placard in town dedicated to the region's doctor who was the GP, obstetrician, surgeon and anaesthetist until 1980. He rather showed us modern single speciality doctors up.

Bibbulmun track - 7th section - Northcliffe to Walpole

The section started with a massive blow. A sign on the Bibbulmun hikers board in Northcliffe had a diversion posted for a proscribed burn - they closed 35km of track and replaced it with a 65km diversion. Brutal both because of the increased distance and because it effectively added an extra day to the section. Extra days = extra food = extra weight.

Disappointing. We dutifully stocked up on extra weight from the somewhat-underwhelming general store and set off from the hotel-motel (actually what it was called) at 6am to undo all the good work the washing machine had put in the day before.

The terrain has changed substantially from the previous section - where before it was karri and jarrah trees it is now sandy plains covered in scrub. The first day the sand was deep enough in places to really slow us down. The loss of trees shading us also meant that we really felt the two hot days (27 and 25 degrees respectively) that started the section.

Day one and we saw the result of the proscribed burn in the distance. The sky darkened with smoke and there arose an ash cloud which looked like a volcanic eruption in the distance. A substantial wind picked up - it wasn't clear whether that was correlation or causation but it certainly added to the atmosphere. It was uncanny, and as we got into the shelter at Lake Manjinup ash started to fall from the hazy skies. The sun was orange through the smoke all afternoon and the next morning had a stunning sunrise.

We left Lake Manjinup and started out for Dogpool in cool, breezy conditions that lasted about fifteen minutes before being replaced by baking sunshine and a plague of flies. Whoever said the fly load decreased south of Dwellingup was obviously on crack. We decided that there were too many flies to stop for lunch so instead we mission-walked as fast as possible to Dogpool. It would have been a rather sub-optimal day if not for the shelter, because Dogpool was awesome. Hot day, cool river with various cascades and our last campfire before entering the total fire ban area. Swimming in the river, got to wash our clothes, mysteriously didn't get eaten alive by mosquitoes. Enough said.

We pushed some hard days through the diverted section, which deviated North on to the Mundabiddi mountain biking trail. It rained and was thankfully a bit cooler which both kept the flies down and our spirits up.

The rain persisted long enough to bring our spirits down again after getting a thorough soaking during a nine-hour walk down to the coast. It was amazing to finally see the sea at Mandalay beach  but we experienced all four seasons of weather that day and by the time we got in (after some hard slogging up steep, deep sand in the dunes) we were wet, tired and desperately in need of showers. Thankfully our was only 6 miles to Walpole the next morning and I'm writing this from a comfy room in the local YHA.

Today is day 33 of the walk. In theory, there are only seven more to go...

Bibbulmun track - 5th section - Donnelly river village to Pemberton

As explained in the previous post we were staying in the land of tame animals at Donnelly river village. Mike had arrived in the evening after two flights, two buses and a very delayed taxi resulting in over 48 hours of sleep deprivation. Turns out this kind of ordeal helps combat jetlag and he slept surprisingly well.

Suspension bridge

We spent more time admiring the emus, roos and parrots before getting on our way again. The excitement of course being the Karri forest for the next 4 days. Another diversion for forest burning meant a boring first day of this section - mainly walking on wide 4x4 tracks. The advantages of this were that the route was shorter on easy walking roads and that we got an unusual view over some agricultural valleys that a look a lot more like home than the Australian bush.

Massive Karri trunk

Our second day on this section was probably the toughest day of the trail so far. It was a longer day as we were doing 3 stages in two days, but the really severe thing about it was the gradients of the paths. On the map going up and down by 30-100 metres at a time doesn't seem too arduous, however when faced with a slope that appears near vertical in front of you the challenge is very apparent. Not only this but after every short sharp accent was a steep descent so we didn't make any upward progress all day. Nonetheless it was nice waking through the Karri trees in a river valley. Our campsite for the night was idyllic; adjacent to a small pond it contained some lovely frogs and but sadly also millions of mosquitos. We also had the pleasure of 'Ratty' for the evening, a resident rodent or marsupial of the shelter that thankfully didn't eat our food but did spend ours making high pitched screeching noises.

Our last two days on the trail were more civilised, easier gradients and shorter distances with some magnificent trees on show - they are neck achingly tall and their trunks are beautifully smooth so we can see why Western Australians are so proud of them. Our trip into Pembroke was uneventful following another river and several dams. We checked into a cabin at the caravan park and decided to have our first rest day of the trip.

The food at the best Western hotel was good - though somehow despite the menu saying that the burgers came with chips - they didn't. There seems to be a large contingent of French workers in Pembroke (three in the pub and more in cafes and the campsite) that we can't quite figure out the reason for.  We're now off for some proper rest day activities - wine tastings at local vineyards followed by a BBQ.