Click into the photo gallery above to see a map of the route full-sized. The medieval road from Bridport to Axminster ran through Symondsbury then round north of Colmer’s Hill to Quarry Cross and North Chideock and on to Whitchurch Canonicorum. Ronald Good, in his 1940 publication The Old Roads of Dorset , describes the route as ‘one of the finest and most impressive old roads in this part of Dorset, being deeply sunken in places, and with the old metalling (road surface) to be seen here and there’.
Following Shutes Lane and Hell Lane, this will be our holloway route as far as North Chideock. We then visit Chideock itself before circling round over Quarry Hill back to Symondsbury. In Highways and Byways in Dorset (1906), Sir Frederick Treves writes: ‘Symondsbury is a pretty enough village of thatched cottages and many trees’ whilst ‘Chideock is an unspoiled old-world village in a hollow of green fields.
Most of its cottages are ancient and are still made beautiful by thatched roofs’. In many ways little has changed, though with the A35 cutting through Chideock it is marginally busier. The Walk Shutes Lane 1 From the triangle with the huge beech, take the unsigned road with the low dry-stone wall and church on the right.
This is Shutes Lane. Walk up past, left Shutes Farm, right Shutes House and left thatched-porch cottages. Continue up into the sunken, shaded ‘Public Route to Public Footpath’ track, still Shutes Lane although closed to traffic for the forese.