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The Ridgeway
England, United Kingdom.
The Ridgeway is ancient trackway often desribed as Britain's oldest Road. The section clearly identified as an ancient trackway extends from Wiltshire along the chalk ridge of the Berkshire Downs to the River Thames at the Goring Gap, and part of the Ickneild Way which ran, not always on the ridge, from Salisbury Plain to east Anglia.
For at least 5000 years travellers have walked along the Ridgeway. Originally connected to the Dorset coast, the Ridgeway provided a reliable trading route to The Wash in Norfolk. The high ground made travel easy and provided a measure of protection by giving travellers a commanding iew, warning against potential attacks. The ridgeway passes near many Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age sites including Avebury Stone Circle, the Iron Age hillforts off Barbury Castle, Uffington Castle and Segsbury Castle; the Neolithic buriel tomb of Wayland's Smithy and the Uffington White Horse, an ancient 120m (400-foot) chalk Horse carved upon the hillside below Uffington Castle.
The Ridgeway National Trail was developed in 1972 and extends 139km (87-miles) along the Ridgeway from Overton Hill, near Avebury, to Streatly, then follows footpaths and part of the Icknield Way through the Chiltern Hills to Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire.