White Horse and South Dorset Ridgeway Dorset

The Weymouth White Horse, actually in the parish of Osmington, was carved into the chalk slopes of the South Dorset Ridgeway in 1808, three years after George III’s last visit to Weymouth. It stands 280ft long and 323ft high. The variability of the ‘whiteness’ is nothing new. Jarvis Harker’s poem of 1877 says ‘The owld White Horse wants setting to rights’ by someone to ‘gee un a scrape to kip un in zhape’. This fine walk ambles through meadows below the monument to Osmington village before climbing the high chalk downs with wonderful views over the sea to Portland and. intermittently, over Dorchester and as far as Bournemouth’s cliff-tops. The return route passes above the White Horse, where the downs are filled with Bronze Age barrows.

The Walk

1. From the duck-pond, walk past The Springhead on your right. At the Water Treatment Works, turn right onto the ‘Public Footpath’ track, passing Cob Cottage. Passing the left fork footpath, go through the end gate into a short grass gully. Through the next gate, keep straight on along the well-used path by the right hedge. The White Horse is prominent to your left. Over the corner footpath-stile, cross the field to the next corner footpath-stile and gate. Through here, cross the next field to the kissing-gate, then cross the field to the corner kissing-gate and gate.

2. Through here, veer right, cross the pipe-bridge and follow the stream and path through the long meadow. Through the end kissing-gate, turn right up Church Lane into Osmington. Keep rising, passing several houses and older cottages. In ¼ mile, turn left into Village Street, signed ‘Osmington Mills 1’. In a few strides, keep straight on past Chapel Lane into the ‘Poxwell 1’ track, rising past gardens before becoming wooded between paddocks. Through the end gate, keep straight on, ascending the high field’s track with the valley head over the left fence, and your first sea view to the right.

3. Through the next fence’s bridleway-gate, keep following the track, with views right to the top of Burning Cliff at Ringstead Bay and Portland. Through another bridleway-gate into the topmost field, stay on the track with views left to Dorchester, soon descending to the bridleway-gate into a yard with a left stone-barn. Through the exit ‘three-way bridleway’ gate, take the left ‘Stock Grazing’ gate onto the cross-valley grass track with the left hedge. You have now joined the South Dorset Ridgeway. Down to your right is Poxwell Manor House.

4. Up the ancient sunken track, go through the bridleway-gate before the twin phone masts. Cross to the bridleway-posted gate, with Dorchester ahead and Bournemouth distant right, on to an exceptionally wide track between banked hedges. Through the end gate, follow the normal-width track, sometimes open right but always against the left hedge, through several high fields with distant views to the Blackmore Vale rim. Through the end 1½ gates into a field, with early Iron Age Chalbury hill-fort ahead and Weymouth left, keep straight on along the right fence.

5. Past the ‘Osmington’ left pointer, go through the 1½ bridleway-gates. Past the left ‘White Horse and Sutton Poyntz’ pointer, keep following ‘Bincombe’ bridleway’ along the high field. Pass the barrow and the left ‘Permitted Path’ and go through the 1½ bridleway-gates into the rising fenced track. Pass another left barrow and the 158m OS trig point, with Came Wood and the Hardy Monument ahead. Now, before towards the tracks’ junction in the hollow, fork left up the grass bank to the half-gate. Through this, don’t take the sharp-left ‘Sutton Poyntz ¾’ path, but fork left on the cross-field path, left of the middle barrow and aiming for the next field’s barrow.

6. Through the facing bridleway-gate, follow the ‘shelf’ grass path. Through another 1½ gates, following the ‘shelf’ path with right gorse. Over the hill’s brow, fork left on the slight path, passing an electricity post, down to 1½ gates onto a steeply-descending track. Past a right beacon and bench, with Sutton Poyntz below, join the right hedge down to the bottom corner footpath-stile and gate. Over this, follow the fenced track, through another gate/stile and past the waterworks. Through the corner gate, walk down the track between cottages back to the duck pond.