Stunning Salisbury Plain

Neil McAllister returns to this beautiful area of Wiltshire to recall childhood memories.

THERE is something intriguing about blank areas on a map. Scots readers will be familiar with these in the Highlands, where the terrain keeps populations low, but a huge chunk of Wiltshire is largely people-free thanks to World War II.

In ancient times the 300-square-mile area of chalk downland was a good place to live – the landscape is dotted with old settlements, long barrows and possibly the world’s most famous historic site, Stonehenge.

But around the turn of the last century, the Army recognised its value for training and started to buy up tracts of land. By the start of the war it owned half the Plain, restricting access and closing almost 40 square miles to civilians.

The A360, which passes through the Plain joining Devizes and Salisbury, is a relatively featureless drive. Instead, we sought a route exploring the Plain’s outer margins.

We started our journey in Littleton Panell, just outside Market Lavington. Fifteen years ago Paul and Lynne Langham created a’Beckett’s vineyard here, producing sparking and still British wines as well as cider and apple juice from their orchards.

“A silly comment started this,” Paul told us. “We lived in the next village and were sitting with a glass of wine in the garden one day, when I said, ‘We can do this.’”

It took three years before the vines could be harvested and now 15,000 bottles a year are made on an idyllic site below a huge manor house.

“It isn’t ours, but the vineyard is on land which used to belong to the house.”

As the road skirts the Plain, it passes Easterton and skims Urchfont. Each year since 1997 scarecrows have been created for a festival, which culminates in a May Bank Holiday extravaganza around the village pond.