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Salt Way across the Cotswold Hills*
Sunday, 1 October 2023 at 16:48
Hailes Church, close to the Salt Way
Salt Way across the Cotswold Hills*
All life depends on the chemical properties of salt to survive. It has been used by man for thousands of years, from food preservation to seasoning.
Salt's ability to preserve food was a founding contributor to the development of civilisation. It helped eliminate dependence on seasonal availability of food, and made it possible to transport food over large distances.
Salt is the one vital food item that cannot be grown or nurtured.
A natural product, it occurs in vast quantities in a few places.
So it became a highly valued trade item, and was considered a form of currency by certain people. Roman soldiers were even paid with it, salt,in Latin Sal, hence our word today, salary.
Many salt roads were established as early as the Bronze Age to carry salt from where it occurs naturally to where it’s needed. Today I’m riding along one of them, the Salt Way across the Cotswold Hills.
This particular Salt Way was followed by salt traders and their pack horses from the source of salt in Droitwich in Worcestershire, to Lechlade in Gloucestershire.
I’m picking up the known part of the route here near Hailes Abbey, not far from Wichcombe.
It’s still identified as the Salt Way on modern maps, and has been since road maps were first made.
*My next YouTube video will be one in which I motorcycle along one of the most historic and well-known salt ways in England.
I pickup the route near Winchcombe, which in full led from Droitwich Spain Worcestershire to Lechlade in Gloucestershire. The route has been in existence since the Iron Age.
As ever, this is a sketched out basis of commentary to the video, which will slowly come together over the next couple of weeks. Please accept that this first rough draft is written for the spoken word, with all the textual liberties that this entails. This material takes a little pulling together, hence I might as well use the text here just to keep the home page fresh for Google searchers. Please bear with me.*
© John Dunn.
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