Wantage in Oxfordshire. Driving over the Ridgeway to get there. King Alfred the Great was born there

We drove to Wantage, Oxfordshire to see the birth place of King Alfred the great. The road in over the Ridgeway was spectacularly beautiful, especially with the golden crops against the blue sky.

The video starts with the drive in over the ridgeway accompanied by music by Dan Lebowitz. The car noises were not great, and the music from the stereo, Pink Floyd, would have been copyrighted any way.

Wantage has a lot of Georgian Fronted buildings, and quite a few timber framed buildings. The centre of town has a great Market place, but even on a Saturday, the traffic was very busy.

It was the birthplace of King Alfred the Great in 849.

Wantage sits just beneath the historic first road of the British Isles (The Ridgeway). Wantage was a small Roman settlement but the origin of the toponym is somewhat uncertain. It is generally thought to be from an Old English phrase meaning "decreasing river". King Alfred the Great was born at the royal palace there in the 849AD in what was originally known as Wanating. Wantage appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. It was in the king's ownership until Richard I passed it to the Earl of Albemarle in 1190. Weekly trading rights were first granted to the town by Henry III in 1246. Markets are now held twice weekly on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Royalist troops were stationed in Wantage during the English Civil War.



On the way home we stopped for a pint, and we were greeted with an amazing sunset when we left the pub, The Hampshire Bowman in Dundridge, Hampshire





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