Brewin Dolphin Ridgeway Rouleur

Britain’s oldest road features in this early-season leg tester.

The Ridgeway is Britain’s oldest road. It’s an ancient track that today runs from Ivinghoe Beacon, Buckinghamshire to Avebury in Wiltshire. The road is dated at 5,000 years old and has felt the weight of Viking armies, Iron Age tribes and medieval drovers that used the road to move livestock. Today it is a well-trodden path frequented by walkers and cyclists and is the heart of the route of the Ridgeway Rouleur.

It is between the villages of Wallington in the Chilterns and Wantage, on the cusp of the North Wessex Downs AONB, that the route follows much of this ancient road. And while most of it resembles a track compared to the roads we know today, the route takes on the tarmac that threads close to — and at times crosses — the original ancient road.

As you drop off the Ridgeway the route travels through Uffington, home to a 3,000-year-old white chalk horse etched into the hillside. In Watlington, on the edge of the Chilterns, there is a curious triangle of chalk on a hillside that dates back to 1764. According to folklore, this was created by the local vicar who wanted to create an optical illusion that his church had a spire. In Wantage the blowing stone that King Alfred the Great used to summon his army back in 871 can be visited.