A field of leeks Being grown for the market, should be ready soon.
These leeks are grown for size, the stems will be about 1.5 ins across when harvested. When grown in the garden for home use I like to sow them two or three seeds at a time in groups no more than 4ins apart. This saves the need for transplanting, a tedious job, and the leaves later form a canopy which smothers all but the strongest weeds and blanches the stems. The resulting leeks are no thicker than your thumb and have about 4 inches of blanch. Very tasty, much better than the fat monsters.

HamletTowns & Villages

Heddington Wick

📷 Photo by Maurice Pullin · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

This small Wiltshire hamlet sits between the market towns of Devizes and Calne, easy to miss if you're not looking for it, but that's rather the point.

The settlement is scattered across the landscape with stone cottages and working farmland, the kind of place where you can still read centuries of rural life in the buildings and fields around you.

The real appeal here is on foot. A network of footpaths radiates out from Heddington Wick into the surrounding countryside, connecting you to nearby villages as you go. The walking is straightforward and rewarding, taking you through rolling fields divided by dry stone walls, with tree-lined lanes that shift through the seasons.

The buildings themselves are worth paying attention to if you care about how places developed over time. Like the broader Cotswolds region, the local architecture is built from that distinctive golden stone quarried locally, and the cottages and farmhouses here show genuine building traditions rather than recreations. Walk around and you're looking at how ordinary people actually lived and worked across generations.

You won't find shops or restaurants in Heddington Wick itself, so plan to base yourself in Devizes or Calne, both roughly six miles away and well equipped with accommodation and facilities. Heddington Wick works best as part of a wider exploration of the area rather than as a destination in itself, combining quiet countryside walking with visits to the larger towns nearby.