Imber Village

  For those of you that don’t know, Imber was a small village in the middle of Salisbury Plain, until 1943 when the occupants were ordered to leave so that the village could be used for military training. It is still part of the Salisbury Plain Training Area and is strictly off limits to the civilian population, save for a few days per year, August bank holiday weekend being one of them. 

I decided to walk to Imber from Heytesbury and after a mile or so, came to the checkpoint. 

As the range was open, the post was unoccupied.

It was a lovely peaceful walk to Imber, with only half a dozen cars passing me by in the two hours or so it took to reach the village. 

I was quite surprised at how many people who had made the effort to come Imber (albeit by car). The church was particularly busy!

There is not much left of the ‘old village’. This building used to be the pub. 

I’m followed the road towards Warminster and made the steady climb up to the highest point (210m)  and then dropped down out of the ‘Danger Area’. 

I then joined the Imber Range Perimeter Path around Battlesbury Hill, Middle Hill and Scratchbury Hill.

This was a lovely part of the walk, with far reaching views and softer ground to walk on. 

By the time I reached Heytesbury my feet were aching and I was getting tired. My pedometer shows a few steps short of 30,000. The route was 13.8 miles ( but I had to retrace my steps for 0.8 mile to pick up sunglasses I had lost) so all in all I walked 15.4 miles. I haven’t done that sort of distance for a couple of years and it shows!