Leave The Cartwheel pub at Whitsbury behind you on your left as you head south-east along the village road for a few yards before turning left to follow a fenced path steeply uphill to a latched gate. Cross the rising pasture beyond, making a bee-line for the church at the top of the hill ahead of you. The church, with its latticed win-dows and its whitewashed interior projecting animage of pleasing sim-plicity, is normally open to visitors. From outside the nave door follow a churchyard path right-handed around the rear of the building and out through a gate to follow left-handed a gravel track. Hedged on your left and flanked by racehorse paddocks on your right, this soon joins a metalled driveway which you follow, downhill to re-emerge on to the village road.
Follow this right-handed for a few yards, then turn right through a gate alongside which a footpath sign points the way past the buildings of Whitsbury Manor Stud. At the end of the buildings turn right to skirt the stud and follow a view-commanding track with a fence on your left and Whitsbury Castle's triple ramparts mantled in woodland to your right Continue ahead on a scenic descent. At the valley bottom, cross a broad, grassy drove and a stile on the other side of it to follow a footpath along the right-hand edge of arable land. You soon skirt the southern end of a small wood of yews and beeches. Follow a track straight on through this wood.
Carry on ahead uphill. This brings you to a stile beyond which your path joins a green lane at the south-ern extremity of a conifer plantation. Soon emerging on to a patch of open downland, you fol-low a grass track, which here bears right to climb to the edge of the grove of pews which masks the Mizmase. Carry on along the wood-land margin to a junction where you turn right to pass a notice-board marking the entry point for the path leading to the Mizmaze. This occupies a circular site with shallow chalk trenches and turfy path-ways forming a pattern which, from the outside, does not look unduly difficult to fathom and work out how to reach the centre. You are asked not to attempt this except as a mental exercise.
Walk out through the yews the way you came in and then bear right to follow a downhill path to rejoin the green lane. As you now continue along it, trees and shrubs flank your way uphill to a fork of tracks where you bear right. The well-used track you now follow winds through the old oaks and beeches of Breamore Wood.
A descent of several hundred yards precedes the point where you leave the wood to skirt an expanse of park-land and pass within yards of Breamore House before continuing downhill along what is now a metalled drive to where a side turning to your left leads to the Saxon church at Breamore. Spare time for at least a peep at this before returning to the main driveway.
Carry on to the next road crossing. Turn right here to follow a lane which turns left at a bend. Following the public road, you head past the houses of Upper Street. Eye-catching period dwellings are half-screened by mellow old walls as you approach the next lane turning. Here you turn right to follow what soon becomes a cottage-flanked cul-de-sac. Where dwellings soon end, so too does the metalled road, and you continue along a tree-lined track. Where the track forks left, keep straight on along what is now a path. This ends at a stile, which you cross to follow a footpath down-hill. At a valley bottom, which you soon reach, you pass through a gate to join an unmetalled farm road, which you follow for a few yards before turning left through a pedestrian gate to follow a rising footpath along arable farmland. Your footpath carries on into a wood on the high ground ahead.
Fairly soon reaching the wood's far side, carry on along the edge of it for several hundred yards. When you draw parallel with a semi-bungalow on your right, turn left to follow a railed path. This leads to a T-junction of fenced paths where you turn left for Whitsbury church, heading right-handed through the church-yard to follow another fenced path which winds steeply downhill to reach the village road. Follow this to retrieve your car from the pub car park.
Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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