We are on the fourth day of our walking tour in Wiltshire and beginning to pick up on the lingo in our trail guide.

There are paths, tracks and lanes, in ascending order of development. Some paths are more visible than others, and some are just grass where someone appears to have walked somewhat recently. Tracks often are dirt and gravel, and many appear to have been driven over by a tractor. Lanes have pavement, and cars, and then you get to roads.

Note the difference in the photos here.

A track

A path

We have yet to be able to specifically tell the difference between a town and a village. Some of the villages where we have stayed or walked are pretty small. 

Hinden, where we spent the first three nights, had two inns, a shop, a church and the showroom of a furniture maker.

Milton, where we were dropped off for our first walk, had only a phone booth (which still are in use here.)

At Swallowcliff, where we are staying tonight, there is an inn, a church and a town hall. The inn is the Royal Oak, owned by James May, a TV celebrity here, and the business partner of Jeremy Clarkson, of Clarkson’s Farm, a hit in America on PBS.

However, the area is close enough to London for folks from the city to have a weekend getaway. At Milton, the taxi driver told us that Eric Clapton had a place nearby.

We traveled through the village of Tisbury, which has shops, restaurants, a train station and other accommodations, but we were told that it isn’t really big enough to qualify as a town.

But the point of this adventure – after two years locked inside by the virus – was to get out in the countryside, and it is even more rural than I had imagined.

So far, we have been on walks of 5, 5.5, 6.8 and 7.8 miles. Mostly they are on Britain’s public footways – public rights of way between (and sometimes on) the fields. Some routes have included an inn for a lunch stop, but not all of them. We have seen plenty of sheep, however.

We are traveling on routes laid out by Foot Trails, a firm that specializes in customized walks. For each day, we get a narrative guide to the trails and an ordnance map. We are on our own for the walks, not with a group, although we have come across other walkers at the various inns and pubs. The directions are not always clear, but Patty is getting quite good at checking details on the maps.

Familiar readers of this blog will recall that we came to Wiltshire, which is west of London near the city of Salisbury, on the idea that the walking would be fairly flat. That was not quite true. The terrain reminds me of the rolling hills of the Palouse, where I grew up, although there are more woods here, smaller farms, and a lot more sheep.

Other highlights, along the way, have included some amazing old churches, including one dating from the 13^th Century. In East Knoyle, we went through the church where Christopher Wren’s father was the vicar. (You English scholars will recall that Wren is perhaps the most famous English architect and responsible for redesigning scores of churches in London after the Great Fire of 1666. Another highlight: the Stourbridge gardens laid out by Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the famous 18^th Century English landscape architect.

Walking continues tomorrow. We are still enthusiastic, uninjured (one small blister,) and having great weather. Also check out Patty’s intermittent Instagram posts at travels.with.patty

Some of the local residents