Selborne, Noar Hill and Selborne Hill

The walk begins at the Selborne Arms and leaves the village via a quiet country lane. Before long, you begin to climb, walking just inside the edge of the wooded Selborne Common, to which you will return later. With the village of Newton Valence being an enticing draw nearby to the east, the route avoids the village to climb to meet the route of the Hangars Way. This path, some 21 miles long, joins Alton in the north to Petersfield in the south.

The Way follows a series of steep-sided hills known in this part of East Hampshire as 'hangars', from the Old English 'hangra' or wooded slope. The route is waymarked by fingerposts and a distinctive logo depicting a tree on a hillside.

Are you skirt Noar Hill, there are some excellent views over the chalk downland to the south and Woolmer Forest and the hills of Hindhead to the east. You pass some disused chalk pits, then cross farmland back to Selborne Common, climbing a little way onto Selborne Hill in order to descend via the zigzag path.

The path was built in 1753 by Gilbert White and one of his brothers to give him easier access to the common. There are delightful vistas through the beech trees that clothe the hanger, down to the village 200 feet below. At the bottom of the hill, you walk across a quiet green track back towards the starting point of the walk.

The Wakes Museum to Gilbert White and to Frank and Lawrence Oates

In 1954 a Mr R W Oates purchased The Wakes. He made funds available to dedicate it as a memorial to Gilbert White and to house a memorabilia relating to Mr Oates family, and specifically to his cousins Frank and Lawrence Oates.

Frank Oates was born in 1840. A respected naturalist, he was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1874, he realised his lifetime ambition of travelling to Africa to visit the Victoria Falls, but died of fever on his return journey.

Lawrence Oates was born in 1880, and fought in the Boer War. In 1910 he was elected to join Robert Scott's ill fated Antarctic exhibition and was one of the five men who reached the South Pole on 18th of January, only to find that he had been beaten there by a matter of weeks by a rival expedition led by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. All five perished on their return trip. Scott's diary records Oates heroism. Suffering from frostbite and gangrene, he sacrificed himself so as not to slow down his companions, uttering the now famous lines "I am just going outside and maybe some time". He walked out of the tent into a blizzard.

The Oates Memorial Museum is at first floor level while the collections relating to Gilbert White are located on the ground floor. There are pieces of the great naturalist furniture as well as his letters and portraits of his family. It is in the garden, pretty much as he created it, that his spirit is most apparent. Just a ha-ha separates it from the green fields and the upward sweep of the hangar below. In the garden is Laburnum March, a sundial White brought from Andover, and a brick path which he laid from the house to a wooden shelter he built for watching birds.