I first set eyes on St Catherine's Hill, when we were approaching Winchester on our 7 hour walk up from Southampton, five weeks ago. It was so obviously an Iron Age Hill Fort. I wet myself when Iron Age Hill Forts are featured in archaeological shows on TV. This one was stunning as it rises 97m.out of the water meadows beside the River Itchen

I was determined to return to climb it. Ches wasn't. No one else wanted to, so I drove up to Winchester to do it on my lonesome.

Tom and I had a little altercation regarding where to park. I had identified a small car park near the base of the hill however Tom insisted I use the Post Code for the carpark as the destination …… I'll explain. Most places in the UK use a Post Code as the destination for satnavs and don't even acknowledge or recognise street names. Most peculiar Momma. Tom took me to a Park & Ride carpark. Close but no cigar. It cost L2.50 as it was after 10.30 am however when I walked to the proper carpark, 500m away, it was free. Tom must be on commission.

Anyway, I found that instead of having to walk another km to the staircase up the hill, I could actually walk a steeper chalk and tree root strewn track up the northern side. I encountered a guy on crutches half way down. I asked if it had been worth the effort of getting to the top. He was reserving judgement until he got down.

I photographed Winchester and surrounding villages as I ascended. Apart form a couple of notice boards with information about which butterflys were attracted by which flowers, there was nothing about the Iron Age Fort, St Catherine's Chapel, the Plague Pits or the Mizmaze.

I can handle the plague pits first as it's the easiest. In 1348 the plague came to England through the Hampshire ports and spread north to Winchester. There was a great deal of anger in Winchester over the burial of plague victims in the Cathedral cemetery and when Bishop Edington wanted to extend the cemetery into the Square where the local people held their market and fair, there was a great deal of angst. They therefore buried them in unconsecrated ground at the base of St Catherine's Hill. Unconsecrated because there weren't enough priest left alive to do the job.

Up on the hill. Why was it and the chapel named after St Catherine? According to one source, it derived its name from the circular form of the hill fort, St Catherine having been martyred upon a wheel. Alternatively, it is locally thought that she was the patron saint of hilltops (having supposedly ascended to heaven from Mount Sinai), and the name is in use for hills elsewhere in the region. There's another near Christchurch which we visited a month ago.

What about the chapel itself? It was a Norman structure built in around 1100 and destroyed in 1537. If it was built of stone, I assume all was carted off to build houses in Winchester, because there is not a single remnant now, just a large stand of Beech trees. It could have been built of timber I suppose, however maintenance of a 400 year old timber chapel couldn't have been easy. Now it is just trees.

Then there is the mizmaze. The hill is largely chalk and to the left of The Clump (the Beech trees) is the Winchester Mizmaze. Here I resort to Prof.Google: "one of eight historic turf mazes still remaining in England. Cut into the chalk, with no junctions or crossings, this is not a maze in the modern sense but a labyrinth. It is 624m long and formed from nine nested squares, in a pattern similar to that used for the traditional game of Nine Men's Morris. Unusually for a turf maze, its form is rectangular rather than circular.

The origins of the Mizmaze are obscure. Although mediaeval in design, it is thought to date from the 17th century. Local tradition links it with Winchester College, as boys from the school used the hill as a recreational area. The legend is that it was carved one summer by a boy who had been banished to the hill for bad behaviour. With nothing else to do, he drew on his knowledge of classical maze design and set out on the lonely task of measuring out the maze. The story ends with the boy drowning on the last day of the holidays!"

The boys from Winchester College also played "Winkies" here until recently. More of that in a following blog.

Finally we come to the Iron Age Hill Fort. As I said, there isn't a notice anywhere about anything but butterflies here. On the internet, precious little about how to distinguish the original defences in the landscape. I had spoken to a number of people on the hill and while they had some little information about the chapel and the mizmaze, nothing and I mean nothing about the hill fort.

I hadn't come all this way to give up without a fight. I wandered off to the north east side of the hill and detected a mound hidden under shrubs and trees rooted into the top of the inner mound. There was a narrow pathway leading through a gap. I now know this to be one of the entrances into the fort. Once I walked through the gap and turned to m left, there was the obvious proof with a high mound on my left (being the inner defensive mound) a path which I was standing on which would have been the bottom of the dip between the inner mound and outer mound which was on my right. I had found the 3,000 year old fort walls. The inner ring would have had a timber palisade right around the fort. Men behind the palisade could look down on attackers climbing over the outer mound and into the ditch between them and then thrown spear or rock or whatever to fend them off. The entrance into the fort was so narrow, they could easily fight them off.

I came across a local who was running along the ditch. I asked him if he knew anything about the hill fort. Nothing. He was running in it and didn't have a clue.

Satisfied I had seen my hill fort, I took the shortcut back down. A slippery chalk track at an angle of around 60 degrees back down the hill.

Mission accomplished, back home.