Wave goodbye to motorway connections and brave the dawdling A303 to discover some of the West Country’s hotspots, says Madeleine Silver
CURSING Stonehenge is par for the course on a trip down the A303. Often, all is well, but, time your journey wrong, and it can feel as if the Cornwall-bound caravans trail back to the M3 as passengers in one-lane traffic strain to get a glimpse of the prehistoric monument. However, as Hampshire makes way to the West Country, there’s a heavy scattering of villages that make braving the bottleneck worthwhile.
Sticking east of Stonehenge is the safe bet for buyers who commute to London daily. The villages surrounding Grateley in the Test Valley (1 hour 20 minutes to London Waterloo by train) are ‘perennially popular’, says Matthew Hallett of Winkworth Salisbury (01722 443001). In addition, the increasingly sophisticated Stockbridge on the Test has pulling power—‘this is not a stuffy old town with a couple of tea shops,’ adds Knight Frank’s Tom Woods (01962 677236).
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