hi my name is rebecca my name is paul and between the two of us we love a good map
mystery and oh my goodness me do we have a scorcher for you today
you join us today on the wessex ridge way here in the heart of wiltshire, i love this part of
the country there's so many old routes and we just so happen to be on the wansdyke so this was built
around 400 to 700 a.d so 1800 years old but prior to that it was the route of a roman road it's
really really beautiful absolutely gorgeous part of the country in a minute Paul's going to realize
he's forgotten his maps but today we're not looking for the routes for a change we're looking
for a unique spot not just unique to wheelchair but unique to the entire uk mainland uk the spot
we're looking for is around about a millimeter square maybe even smaller so hopefully we'll i've
forgotten the maps told you tell you what i'll pop it in the green bag that's on your back right now
i don't think you did paul you put them in the green bag did i yes you did look oh yeah so i did
so this map gives us an idea of the vast location we're looking at today
in fact it's around about 50 square miles we're searching for one millimetre square now it almost
forms a triangle between our devices calne and across to avebury the Wiltshire triangle
what like the Bermuda triangle could be um let's hope we don't disappear true but if we disappeared
then they wouldn't be watching us do the thing with that true true good point so first of all
context let's start our journey here just south of the village of bishop cannings and the water
rises here and fills some channels they've got some elites all around here and heads south
so in fact if it goes south from here it must go underneath the kennet and avon canal yes and
they head south into echilhampton water and then into the river avon which goes through never even
amesbury down into salisbury and ultimately out onto the english channel to the south of england
okay so nothing really exciting there then so um we're next okay so we are now going to go to the
north eastern tip of that triangle next to this which is west kennet longborrow built around 5
500 years ago and used and visited for a thousand years thereafter and don't
forget the huge amount of soil that is just behind us silbury hill well enough is about
the same size of the pyramids and was only built within about 100 years of them too
now just between the two of those flows a river the river Kennet
and it rises about five miles north of here and then heads east i see where this is going now
indeed it flows east so river Kennet then joins the river Thames somewhere near reading or in
reading and then carries on going out to the north sea on the east of England
ah so our next location would be on the north west point of the Wiltshire triangle
yes and here we are next to the very picturesque houston wellington now this air right in front of
us is a spring quite a large spring for the river marden which then heads to the west west am i
right calm down patience we're getting to the good bit any second now they head west to a series of
rivers along this side of the the triangle head to the west and ultimately into a river avon another
river avon which heads through bristol into the uh bristol channel and out to the atlantic ocean
so what you're saying is there's three different catchments that head in three different directions
yes now the real task for today is to try and find the meeting point of all of those free watersheds
which isn't easy because as i said we're dealing with the wiltshire triangle yes we're dealing
with a triangle but we're dealing with 50 square kilometres of land so let's get a map plot the
potential raindrops and see where they go that should narrow it down a little bit perfect
okay so we've stuck all this together i say we Rebecca's stuck with this together
we've got two sharpies we've got a blue one which is going to represent the three
rivers that we have already visited so number one up here is the river kennet
we've got the etchinghilhampton however you pronounce it three or four little tributaries
there and over here on this side up here we've got the river martin and the springs
for the river marden which go all the way through there so three rivers or three
uh springs should we say they're there and there we've still got this 50 mile square radius now
to pretty much chuck that one away and say where if a bit of rain dropped would it go
right so this is us at the top of round way hill it's the final part of today's
journey where we try and find now we've identified on the map where we try and find
the square millimetre that is unique where if you've dropped a raindrop on that square
millimetre and it's split into three ways it would go in three different directions now the line
here to our north immediate north on the map is the the line that goes horizontal or east
west now anything to the north side of that goes north and then off to the east into the Thames
but what we're really looking for is a crucial part to our south where the line is divided and
heads south now uh to the uh west of that line it goes south and off into Salisbury and into
the solar and to the uh east of that line it goes off into the Bristol channel so there's
the the three points that we've identified and it has to be very much here somewhere
okay we have scoured the top of round way hill which is where we are now and we think we found
not only the highest point on round way hill on this section but also the section where it divides
the north uh from height and when it heads south and goes down that ridge so we think
by right this spot here is the highest in round way woods and therefore we could pick a millimetre
obviously that's a better poetic license but you could in theory pick a millimetre where if a
raindrop landed right here it could potentially split and go in three different directions and
end in three different bodies of water i think i'm almost uh certain 99.7 percent
certain that that would make this spot unique in the British isles the mainland uk this spot here
is unique thanks for watching we'll see you next Sunday subscribe like comment share
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