Dorchester to Trowbridge

 The last leg of the journey ended in Dorchester in August 2023. At the time, I expected to be able to complete my circumnavigation of every English county town before the end of the year, but as they say: "Life got in the way" and for various reasons I got no further. Dorchester was farther away from Lancaster  -and more difficult to get to - than anywhere I had started or finished a leg up until then and, if I'm being honest, the southern counties ahead: Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey, and Kent held little appeal (although I had been looking forward to Middlesex!).

But a holiday in Wiltshire, near Devizes, provided an opportunity to move on from Dorset relatively easily, so I set a day aside to get to Dorchester on the train from Pewsey, changing at Westbury, and make progress from there.

But where to go?

Next county on the itinerary was Wiltshire and when planning the trip I had assumed the county town was Salisbury, a belief that had influenced the route I had taken ever since entering the West Country at Taunton back in 2023. That turned out to be a misapprehension on my part, something I only found out by accident at a much later stage.  Most online sources say that the county town of Wiltshire is Trowbridge (somewhere I had passed near to and could have incorporated in the Spring of 2023) and they justify this by saying it became so in 1889 following the establishment of Wiltshire County Council and its decision to have its headquarters there.

This puzzled me, because the concept of a county town is somewhat amorphous and unofficial and is certainly not related to the seat of local government. Every county council in England was established in 1889 and by no means all of them set up shop in the "county town". My home county of Lancashire is a good example: the county town is Lancaster but the county council meets in Preston.

The Association of British Counties (ABC), an organisation campaigning to protect the historical and geographical identities of the counties (as opposed to what it calls "local government administrative areas) states quite definitely and without qualification that the county town of Wiltshire is "Wilton", an old town, but which nowadays more resembles a suburb of nearby Salisbury. However, the website "Wikishire", which the ABC links to from its own site says that the county town is Salisbury!

The Historic Counties Trust and the Campaign for Historic Counties , which share the aims of the ABC are silent on the matter, whilst Wikipedia, which doesn't really understand the difference between "counties" and "administrative areas" names Wilton, Salisbury, Trowbridge and Devizes as candidates to be the county town!  I decided that to be on the safe side I had better visit all four!

WILTSHIRE  County Town: See above!

18 June 2025

I arrived at Dorchester West railway station off the train from Pewsey and walked the short distance to Trinity Street, where I had about 15 minutes to wait for my first bus. It should have been longer, but the train from Westbury was half-an-hour late.

It has to be said that one doesn't see the best side of Dorset's county town from the bus stop, but that;s not uncommon and in any case I had spent a full evening inthe town back in August 2023, so knew it well.

Blandford Forum

Damory Coaches provided a double-decker on its awkwardly-numbered "CR9" (what does the "CR" stand for?) to Blandford Forum. This turned out to be a fast, main road run along the A35 and then the A354 but with a diversion to serve Tolpuddle and one or two other villages on the way to Blandford, where we passed the Hall & Woodhouse brewery on the way into town.  I had just over half-an-hour to walk up and down the main street of this attractive small country town before joining another Damory Coaches bus - on service 20 - to Salisbury.

This was another main road route, merely diverting off the A354 to serve the village of Sixpenny Handley, although that produced no passengers.  Just north of the village we crossed the county boundary into Wiltshire.

Getting to Wilton proved easier than anticipated. Salisbury lost its central bus station many years ago when the land became too valuable to it to be sued for mere buses and services were redistributed to a number of on street stops in the city centre.  Buses to Wilton left from the curiously-named "New Canal" but as this was where the bus from Blandford arrived, it couldn't have been easier.

The Salisbury Reds (part of the same bus group as Damory Coaches) service R8 followed a rather tortuous route to Wilton, ignoring the main road in favour of narrow and twisting residential streets to the south, which involved at least one reverse to allow oncoming traffic to pass, something bus drivers are usually reluctant to do.

The Old Town Hall, Wilton

Wilton, which I think I will consider the "real" county town of Wiltshire if only for the obvious link in the names, is a small place, really just a large village, and the only buildings of note in the centre were the church and the Old Town Hall, now a Baptist church. From signs in the market place it appears that it still has a Thursday market, although as I was there on Wednesday I can't confirm that.

It wasn't going to be possible to get to Trowbridge and then back to my holiday accommodation in one day, but I could make progress as far as Devizes, which according to Wikipedia, may or may not be the county town.  I thought at first that I would have to wait almost an hour and a half back in Salisbury for a 2A to the town, but then realised that the bus back into the city would intersect with an earlier journey on service X2, which was not only earlier but much faster. The only problem was that the "PR3" from Wilton (so numbered because it makes a side trip to the Park & Ride site (geddit?) before heading into town was due at the interchange point only a minute before the X2.

It was touch-and-go, but I was able to leave the PR3, cross the road via a handy Pelican crossing that didn't make me wait the usual two minutes before allowing me to cross, and walk down to the bus stop on the other side of road just as the X2 came into view.

I was rewarded by yet another fast, main road route in a double-decker, this time along the A360 with the only diversion of note being into the huge Stonehenge Visitor Centre car and coach park, which anyone intending to visit the stones should be aware is nowhere near Stonehenge itself.

I'd been expecting the afternoon traffic in Salisbury to delay things, but this wasn't the case and we were back in Devizes on time just after 17.00.  I've now visited three of the four county town candidates (and the "real" one) and shall return to include Trowbridge soon.

Devizes - last stop before Trowbridge

Taunton to Dorchester