The Dorset and Wiltshire Stour is 60.5 miles long from its source at Stourhead near Stourton in Wiltshire to
the outflow into Christchurch Bay which it shares with the river Avon through the narrow and treacherous Run which
links Christchurch Harbour to the sea.
In its lowest reaches, between its outlet at The Run at Christchurch Harbour.
The advent of the Industrial Revolution drove a need for better communications which caused many canals to be built. One scheme, the Dorset and Somerset Canal was proposed but never executed, would have connected the Bristol and the English Channels through the Stour Valley.
The Central Dorset railway line ran along the Stour Valley for much of its route and crossed the watercourse five times.
The flow of the Stour and its tributaries is very unpredictable in winter but the low summer flow supports rich communities of submerged, emergent and floating plants to prosper.
Unlike the chalk Frome and Piddle, the Stour's clay substrate supports the common clubrush (Scirpus lacustris) and the yellow water lily (Nuphar polysepalem). This latter produces thin leaves beneath the water line and large bright yellow flowers and thick floating leaves above.
The Stour also harbours some rare aquatic plants; the Loddon pondweed (Potamogeton nodosus) inhabits gravelly reaches of the river between Child Okeford and Blandford Forum. Between Blandford and Wimborne Minster, the native subspecies of the summer snowflake (Leucojum aestivum) is found on the riverbanks and islands.
see also: Dorset's Rivers
White Mill Bridge, reckoned to be the oldest of Dorset's bridges, features in a legend which claims that the people of Sturminster Marshall were in need of new bells for the parish church. They took the bells from Knowlton church but, finding themselves chased by the villagers of Knowlton, they cast the bells into the Stour from the bridge. When the thieves returned to recover the bells, they could not prevent them from slipping back into the waters however hard they tried and, the legend tells, there they lie to this day.
The 64-mile long-distance walk follows the River Stour from the sea at Christchurch to the river�s source at Stourhead.
At Sturminster Marshall, the footpath meets the 19.5 km (just over 12 miles) long Wareham Forest Way leading through some of the less well known landscapes north of the Isle of Purbeck.
The section from Christchurch to Spetisbury is managed by Greenlink, and that from Spetisbury to Stourhead by the North Dorset Countryside Rangers.
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