The Pub
Hidden in the Hampshire Hills, amid the South Downs, THE FLOWER POTS INN is a superb pub and brewery, owned by three locals, which warmly welcomes walkers. The Georgian-era, brick-built former farmhouse remains divided into three rooms: the public bar, with a large
Start
From the car park, stroll through Hinton Ampner gardens and around the church. Walk past Church Cottage, on your right, go through the grand gate and follow the lane as it goes downhill, passing a thatched cottage and meeting the A272.
461 m
Carefully cross the road to the lane opposite. You will see a Cheriton Battlefield Walk information board on your left - pause and have a read, before continuing up the lane, which turns into a track.
707 m
Go under a tall metal forestry gate, and turn right along Cheriton Lane, an unsealed track that passes across the lower section of the battlefield.
1.40 km
Just before you meet the road, turn left into a held, following a footpath arrow, and walk with the hedge on your right. The path bends left and then cuts through the hedge to meet a lane. Turn left along this track and walk uphill. Ignore footpaths leading right and left, and continue walking along the undulating track, with the battlefield over the hedge on your left. It's a gently folding farm field today, but much blood was spilt on this soil on 29 March 1644, when a 10,000-strong Parliamentarian army violently clashed with Royalist forces numbering arourd 7,000. Cheriton Wood, on your right, was a key strategic area, too, and the scene of hot fighting as control of this vantage point changed hands.
2.59 km
When you meet the road, you can either turn left straight away, along Badshear Lane, or follow Cheriton Lane as it bends right and walk about 500 yards to the junction with Scrubbs Lane, where a memorial to the hundreds of men who lost their lives in the battle poignantly overlooks Cheriton Wood. After seeing the memorial and taking in the view of the woodlands and South Downs, return to the junction, do a dogleg and walk along Badshear Lane.
3.71 km
When you pass a large barn, turn left and walk along a track (Broad Lane). Ignore a path coming in from the left, but shortly afterwards, at a crossways, turn right along the Wayfarers Walk, a 71-mile (114-km) walking route between Walbury Hill in Berkshire and Emsworth in Hampshire, which both follows an ancient drovers' path and traces the first flightpath of aviation pioneer Geoffrey de Havilland.
4.47 km
At a confluence of paths, our route is joined from the left by the Itchen Way, a 32-mile (51.5-km) footpath following the route of the River Itchen from its source (Hinton Ampner) to its mouth at Woolston. Do a little dogleg to continue going straight, along both the Wayfarers Walk and the Itchen Way. Walk between a fence and a hedge and keep following the path on a zig-zag route, until you meet a long narrow section that descends between two fences and emerges by a stream and school in Cheriton.
4.97 km
Cross the little bridge into the village. Turn right, walk across the road and stroll with the stream on your right. Bear left and follow a fingerpost for the Wayfarers Walk. Cross the road and go along Hill Houses Lane. Turn immediately left through a gate, walk across a field and go through a second gate into the church graveyard. Walk to the left of the church, and when you meet the road, go right (left?). Emerge opposite a green and houses, turn right and walk past a war memorial (on your left). At the junction, turn right and carefully walk up the road to The Flower Pots Inn, which is on your left.
5.42 km
Leave the pub, turn right and walk back along road. Bear right at the end, cross the stream, continue to another stream, then turn left along a footpath with a fingerpost, and walk with the water on your left. At the end of this path, turn right and walk back up the footpath between fences that you walked down earlier.
6.17 km
Reverse your earlier footsteps along the zig-zag path to the junction where the Itchen Way and the Wayfarers Walk meet. Here, briefly go right on the Itchen Way, then take an immediate left to walk diagonally right along a footpath across a farm field. You will pass a raised long barrow to your right. Keep going to the bottom right corner of the field, where you will join the track you walked along earlier, taking you across the A272 road and back into Hinton Ampner.
12.38 km
Finish
