Three and a half miles, twelve stops, about fifty minutes.
Anticlockwise from the gate, up the hill, along the wall, through the woods and back down past the hives. Then two stops that are not on this farm at all, which we have labelled rather than hidden.
Stop by stop, with the distances.
The route is anticlockwise because the climb is easier that way round and because the light is better on the wall in the afternoon. Neither of those matters in a browser, and we have kept the order anyway.
Nothing on this route crosses either of the two public footpaths. Those are rights of way, they are on the definitive map, and you do not need us to show you round them.
- The Gate · 0.0 miles
A five-bar gate, a cattle grid and a sign that has been photographed more times than most listed buildings.
- The Farm Shop · 0.2 miles
It started because forty tonnes of potatoes had no buyer.
- The Yard · 0.3 miles
The turning circle between the grain store, the workshop and the back of the shop.
- The Big Field · 0.8 miles
From the top of the rise you can see the entire field at once, which means you can see the thin ground fail before anybody standing in it notices.
- The Dry Stone Wall · 1.2 miles
No mortar, no foundation to speak of, and it will outlive everybody involved in building it.
- The Woods · 1.6 miles
A few acres of mixed woodland at the edge of the holding.
- The Spring · 1.9 miles
A spring line where the limestone meets the clay, a stone trough, and the only reliable water on the holding that did not arrive in a pipe.
- The Unfarmed · 2.2 miles
Margins, hedges, woodland edge and the corners a combine cannot reach.
- The Bees · 2.5 miles
Six hives on the south edge of the wildflower ground.
- The Lambing Shed · 2.8 miles
Four pens, a creep, a heat lamp and a camera.
- The Brewery · 3.1 miles
The walk cheats here.
- The Pub · 3.4 miles
The Farmer’s Dog, which is five miles down the road and not on this walk in any honest geographical sense.
Each leg, and what it is like.
| Leg | Distance | Ground | What it is like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gate to shop | 0.2 miles | Metalled track | Flat, and the only part with a queue on it |
| Shop to yard | 0.1 miles | Concrete | A working yard. In reality you would need a reason to be here |
| Yard to the big field | 0.5 miles | Stone track, rising | The climb. Fifty metres of ascent and the best view on the farm |
| Big field to the wall | 0.4 miles | Headland, grass | Level, along the top, and exposed in any wind |
| Wall to the woods | 0.4 miles | Grass, then leaf litter | Downhill, and slippery in the real world |
| Woods to the spring | 0.3 miles | Soft, often wet | The one part that is genuinely muddy all year |
| Spring to the unfarmed | 0.3 miles | Field margin | Uncropped six-metre strip. Easy going |
| Unfarmed to the hives | 0.3 miles | Grass | Slow, deliberately. Do not hurry past bees |
| Hives to the lambing shed | 0.3 miles | Stone track | Back towards the buildings |
| Shed to the brewery | 0.3 miles | Not on this farm | Stitched on, and labelled as such |
| Brewery to the pub | 0.3 miles | Five real miles | Also stitched on. We are not pretending otherwise |
01/ 03
How the walk is built.
A frame sequence, not a video.
The opening is a sequence of still plates scrubbed from your scroll position rather than a video that plays at you. You control the speed, you can stop, and you can go backwards.
Under a reduced-motion preference it collapses to a single plate and a caption. That is not a degraded experience, it is a storyboard, and a storyboard is an honest thing for a walk to be.
- Frames
- 12, one a stop
- Reduced motion
- One plate and a caption
- Autoplay
- None
Twelve pages, each one a place.
Every stop is a real page with a real URL that will not change. You can link to the spring, bookmark the wall, or send somebody straight to the bees without making them walk the first two miles.
That is deliberate. A tour that only works in sequence is a slideshow, and a slideshow is not something anybody returns to.
- Stops
- 12
- Each one
- A real, linkable page
- Order
- Suggested, not enforced
And a keyboard path all the way through.
Tab from the gate to the pub without touching a pointing device, with a visible focus ring on everything that takes focus and no keyboard trap anywhere on the route.
That was tested by doing it, repeatedly, rather than by running a checker and reading the score.
- Keyboard path
- Complete
- Focus visible
- Everywhere
- Traps
- None
Why it ends five miles away.
The last two stops are not on this farm. The brewery is not here and never has been, and the pub is five miles down the road at Asthall.
We stitched them on because the walk is about where the barley goes, and stopping at the lambing shed would leave out the entire economic argument. Barley leaves the gate at a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds a tonne and comes back as something worth twenty to forty times that.
The alternative was to pretend the geography is different, which is what a marketing department would have done. We have labelled both stops instead.
The route, in short.
3.4 miles
Measured along the track, not as the crow flies.
About fifty minutes
At reading pace, with the plates.
Twelve stops
Ten on the farm, two labelled as off it.
No footpaths crossed
Those are rights of way and they are already yours.
Start at the gate.
Which is where everything about this place starts, including the argument.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
The cast page names every person and what they are actually responsible for, which is not always what the programme implies.
No. This is an unsolicited third-party demonstration build, not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the businesses it describes.
