Illustration — photo coming soon
Standing on this path near Long Newnton, you're treading ground that's carried two thousand years of traffic.
The Fosse Way is one of Roman Britain's most important roads, running in an almost impossibly straight line from Exeter in the southwest all the way to Lincoln in the northeast. It functioned as a crucial military and communication route for the Roman Empire, and the engineering precision that made it so effective is still visible today.
You won't find dramatic excavated ruins here, but that's part of what makes walking this section so rewarding. The straightness of it across the fields is genuinely striking once you notice it, and you can see how modern roads have simply adopted its course rather than fight it. Spend time on a stretch of it and you start to picture the legionaries and traders who moved along these same ruts, the sheer scale of Roman ambition made tangible.
Cirencester is a short drive away if you want to explore this period further. It's the site of the Roman town Corinium Dobunnorum, and the Corinium Museum there has excellent material on life in Roman Britain. Malmesbury, another nearby market town, has a significant Abbey and works well as a stopping point if you're exploring the wider area.
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