OS Explorer map 169, Cirencester & Swindon: Fairford & Cricklade – I do not own this map, and had not visited it before starting this blog. Visited for this post 29th November 2023.
Google Maps location links: Swindon, Liddington Castle hillfort
I came to this map area at the end of November for a four-day work retreat; this being where our team goes away together to a house in the countryside for a few days. The idea being that having everyone together and not distracted by trying to do their usual work is a good place for focussed discussion, as well as encouraging a sense of belonging, team-building and so on, especially since some of us work remotely or part-remotely. My posts about my trip to Devon in early 2020 were about a similar retreat with my previous employer; I’ve actually been to two other retreats with my current employer since then, both in 2021 – but they were both in the Cotswolds map area which I’d already posted about, so didn’t get mentioned on the blog.
The venue this time around was a house a few miles southeast of Swindon, between the villages of Liddington and Aldbourne in the North Wessex Downs, with the ancient hilltop track the Ridgeway running just a little to the west of it. It’s not an area I’ve visited before, but it was very pretty!
The retreat itself was very pleasant. It was the first team-only retreat we’d had in a couple of years, so I think felt very refreshing and gave us a nice sense of energy. I especially hadn’t spent much time with the people on our team who work mostly remotely in a long while, so that was nice. My employer is a research charity, but I’m not a researcher myself, being instead on the administrative side doing things like accounting, HR, compliance and so on. This means that although there were a lot of work-related sessions, usually discussons about strategy or research topics, I had a good amount of free time since the deeply research-focussed ones were of less relevance to me and I could sit out of them. I spent some of that time doing bits of organising, tidying up and so on to help my colleague – the other person in my little administrative department of two – who was running the event, but also had some extra time to relax, which was nice!
Other than work sessions, there were various not-too-intense social activities like board games, sitting around a bonfire one evening, and I went on a few walks in the area with people while chatting. A couple of times this took me up onto the ridge, Sugar Hill, just to the northeast of the house, which was very nice except for having a grand view of the M4 in the adjacent valley.
Notably, on one walk we explored to the southwest, walking up onto the Ridgeway and visiting the gigantic Liddington Castle hillfort. It was a crisp, frosty day which made the hills look very pretty, and the hillfort itself was very impressive. I’ve seen a hillfort or two in my time, but usually just looking across at it from an adjacent hill; climbing up onto the bank of Liddington really made you appreciate the sheer scale of the thing – from the foot of the ditch to the top of the bank was probably a good eight metres high even today, and the enclosed oval area was probably about 200 metres wide. I’m a bit puzzled as to why it was so big – you could probably fit thousands of people in there living comfortably, or a lot more in an emergency shelter situation, and I wouldn’t have guessed it would need to serve so big a population in the Iron Age. Just intuition though – I’m no archaeologist and am jsut vaguely musing.
At the end of the retreat, just before heading home, some of us went on one excursion that was particularly great, but you will have to wait for my next post to read about!
Visiting all the maps! 