14 August 2019

Imber cycle

Imber was a village in the Salisbury plain that was evacuated during World War II so that the surrounding area could be used for military training, without having to worry about the presence of civilians.

It opens up a few times each year - Christmas, Easter and 10 days in August.

In August a dedicated group take a load of London buses down for the day, so you can travel around without expending too much effort !

Another option is to get a train to Warminster - which appears to be the only convenient station - and then cycle around the area.

Going on a Sunday would be a good idea, as the church should be open
http://www.imberchurch.org.uk/

Looking at the map on the end of the Defence Estate brochure (page 4 of the original pdf shown below) - I reckon the following route would be a good way of exploring the whole are in an afternoon (using google maps to estimate cycling times)





Warminster - Gore Cross                           55 mins

Gore Cross - Point I                                   36 mins

Point I - Imber - Knock Castle - Point E     57 mins

Chilterne - Tilshead - Gore Cross               34 mins
or via "German village"                               49 mins

Gore Cross - Warminster                            53 mins

Total - about 250mins - so just over 4 hours of cycling


Train tickets from London to Warminster are quite expensive (and there isn't much saving to be had from ticket splitting) - so just need to book early once the advance tickets become available.

Update:
IanVisits reckons that you can get the train ticket down to 26 gbp by splitting it at Salisbury


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