MANE ROADS
Cycling Plus UK|May 2023
Wiltshire has eight giant horses carved into its chalky hillsides. Rob Ainsley saddles up to ride them all...
Rob Ainsley
MANE ROADS

stonehenge. Avebury. Long Barrows. Crop circles. White Horses. There's something weird about Wiltshire. Must be those open plains and chalk slopes: a blank canvas to send messages to the gods. Or, as some would have it, extra-terrestrials to us.

Britain has many hill figures in the shape of a giant steed round the country. Most famous is the ancient one on the Ridgeway at Uffington, Oxfordshire. But it looks more like a weasel, sketched by Picasso. And if you cycle there, you'll be disappointed. Folkestone's kitschy, new-fangled horse is only visible from the train as it ducks into the Channel Tunnel. At least Yorkshire's effort, at Kilburn on the edge of the North York Moors, is a landmark view from many a ride.

Wiltshire, however, has eight horses in all, more than everywhere else put together, all hacked out the turf in the last 300 years by people with spades, not aliens with laser beams.

I collected the lot in one baking hot day last summer: a lovely 70-mile circular trip from Pewsey, through open, billowing, uplifting, hills-and-plains scenery. Here's what happened.....

1. Pewsey White Horse 6.30am 

Pewsey's horse, cut in 1937 to replace an earlier lost one, is the smallest of Wilts' eight canonical nags: 20m by 14m, roughly tennis-court sized, though on a 25% gradient, rallies would be brief. Getting there, as with most of the Wiltshire White Horses (WWHs), involves a long, steady 100m-plus climb from the flatlands up the hillside via a narrow lane. I lock my bike to the fence, needlessly - nobody's around this cloudless morning - and walk through dry knee-high grass down the short footpath to the figure.

This story is from the May 2023 edition of Cycling Plus UK.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the May 2023 edition of Cycling Plus UK.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM CYCLING PLUS UKView All
Objectives of desire
Cycling Plus UK

Objectives of desire

Ned ponders his affection for cycling on a ride from London to Minehead

time-read
3 mins  |
February 2024
ONE OF A KIND
Cycling Plus UK

ONE OF A KIND

Project One combines premium-quality customised bikes with an endless palette of colours and designs from the creative experts at Trek. It's a winning formula. Here's why...

time-read
2 mins  |
February 2024
Trek Checkpoint ALR 5 Driftless
Cycling Plus UK

Trek Checkpoint ALR 5 Driftless

£2,700 Aluminium bike-packing-friendly gravel bike

time-read
3 mins  |
February 2024
Gower Peninsula, Wales
Cycling Plus UK

Gower Peninsula, Wales

A rider powers up the Cefn Bryn ridge on south Wales' Gower Peninsula.

time-read
2 mins  |
February 2024
Slow commotion
Cycling Plus UK

Slow commotion

Downing Street targeting 20mph zones is attacking popular policy

time-read
3 mins  |
February 2024
Black Series Multistrada
Cycling Plus UK

Black Series Multistrada

£5,629 British designed, all-road speedster

time-read
2 mins  |
February 2024
Helmetcam militia
Cycling Plus UK

Helmetcam militia

Hey, bad drivers! Want to be in the movies? Then smile as you close-pass us while on the phone

time-read
1 min  |
February 2024
Rolling horizons
Cycling Plus UK

Rolling horizons

2018 Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas tells us about the joy of discovering new routes

time-read
3 mins  |
February 2024
ENTER THE DRAGON
Cycling Plus UK

ENTER THE DRAGON

It's one of the toughest sportives in the UK, but did climb-loving cycling author Simon Warren have the legs to slay the beast of a sportive route in 2023?

time-read
6 mins  |
February 2024
LOFTY GOALS
Cycling Plus UK

LOFTY GOALS

Higher, harder, longer... the road-sportive calendar gets ever more extreme. Here are 10 of the toughest single day rides to enter for 2024

time-read
6 mins  |
February 2024