The Ridgeway National Trail travels for 87 miles (139km) through the North Wessex Downs and the Chilterns Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in southeast England

Section 1: Overton Hill to Ogbourne St George

Avebury Stone Circle © Natural England/Tina Stallard

World Heritage Site

This first section of The Ridgeway starts in what is probably the richest area of archaeology in Britain, the World Heritage Site of Avebury. Within a mile or so of the start at Overton Hill you can reach the Avebury Stone Circle, Silbury Hill (the largest man-made mound in Europe constructed by Stone Age people using antler picks and shovels made from the shoulder blades of oxen), West Kennett long barrow, the Sanctuary, the Stone Avenue and Fyfield Down National Nature Reserve littered with sarsen stones.

Barbury CastleThe Hackpen White Horse and Barbury Castle

Travelling north, below you at Hackpen Hill you pass the first of the hill figures cut into the chalk that are scattered along the length of The Ridgeway. The Hackpen White Horse was created in 1838 by a local parish clerk. A little further on you go right through the centre of the first Iron Age fort on The Ridgeway, Barbury Castle, that is unusual in having a double ditch to protect it.