The road from Wimborne to Blandford, four miles from the former town, passes on the right an imposing hill crowned with fir trees.  This is the famous Badbury Rings.  Here the conquering West Saxon met his most serious set-back and almost his only real defeat.  The camp is undoubtedly prehistoric and was not a permanent settlement, but rather a military post of great strength for use in time of war.  The ramparts consist of three rings of “wall” with a ditch to each, the outer being a mile round.  The hill is noteworthy for its extensive views, reaching in clear weather to the Isle of Wight.  The Purbeck Hills appear far away over the beautiful park of Kingston Lacy, the seat of the Bankes, an old county family.  The house contains a fine collection of pictures not usually shown to the public.

The road it is proposed to follow leaves this demesne to the left and in two miles reaches Sturminster Marshall on the banks of the Stour.  The old church with its pinnacled tower was restored so carefully that its ancient character has to a large extent been retained.  The church was originally Norman, but several additions of varying dates have been made to it.  As the church is entered, two fifteenth-century coffin lids will be noticed in the porch.  Within is a brass to a former vicar (1581) and a slab to Lady Arundel of Nevice.  The memorial to King Alfred was presented to the church a few years ago by R.C.  Jackson, the antiquary, to commemorate the supposed connexion of this Stour Minster with the great king.

Passing Bailey Gate, which is the station for Sturminster, the Poole road is reached in a few minutes; turning left and following this for a mile, the pedestrian may take a rough track uphill to the right that leads to Lytchett Matravers, an out-of-the-way village with a Perpendicular church and an unpretending inn.  Two miles to the south-east on the Poole-Wareham road is Lytchett Minster, remarkable for the extraordinary sign of its inn, the “St. Peter’s Finger.”  This has been explained by Sir Bertram Windle as a corruption of St. Peter ad Vincula.  The inn unconsciously perpetuates the name of an old system of land tenure, Lammas-day (in the Roman calendar St. Peter ad Vincula) being one of the days on which service was done as a condition of holding the land.  The pictured sign itself, however, is very literal in its rendering of the name.  One of the finest views obtainable of Poole and its surroundings is from Lytchett Beacon, and in the opposite direction, the tower in Charborough Park is a conspicuous landmark.

The direct road from Lytchett Matravers goes by Sleeping Green (we are approaching the land of queer names) and reaches Wareham in five miles after passing over the lonely Holton Heath, an outlier of the Great Heath of Dorset, that wide stretch of moorland that Mr. Hardy has made world-famous under the general appellation of “Egdon Heath.”

Wareham, pleasant and ancient, is, after the capital, the most interesting inland town in Dorset.  Its position between the rivers Frome and Puddle, that unite just before reaching Poole Harbour, was of value as a strategical point and from very early times, possibly prehistoric, the town was strongly fortified by its famous “walls” or earth embankments that enclose to-day a much greater area than the town itself.