This is a delightful walk of many varied parts. It includes Beningfield Wood (Woodland Trust), a fine holloway and a varied hillside and valley walk though a nature reserve, ending up along the bed of a small stream.
The walk is around 5Km. It took us about two hours because of lots of stops for photographs.
Parking in Ridgeback Lane is sparse. There is some verge parking space (2 cars perhaps) at the entrance to South Poorton Nature Reserve but we parked at the start of an alternative path from SY 5102 9865 to SY 5030 9640 (photos 1 and 2) which we decided not to take as (in July) it was overgrown - Dorset may have more miles of footpath than any other county but this means that many are overgrown of otherwise un-negotiable or even unlocatable.
The track west of Beningfield Wood (Map reference SY 5070 9768, photos 5 to 8, is shown on the OS map as "Other route with public access". The wood is not shown on the map of the photos. This track, though once important, is now one such virtually impassable path, at least at the North end, so we should have walked through Beningfield Wood. Instead we walked in a deep water-work groove (photos 4 and 5).
This track quite suddenly deepens as it nears West Milton where it becomes one on the best examples of Dorset's holloways or sunken lanes (photos 9 to 11).
A map is available showing where the photos were taken - the link opens in a new window..
The paths are shown on Streetmap.co.uk map of the area (opens in a new window).
Document URI: https://walks.westdorset.org/sp-wm/index.html