Day 8: Cold Ashton to Bath

Weather:   Cloudy and cool

Distance covered today: 16.4km ( 10.2 mi)

Last night’s B&B: Labernum Cottage (£43)

% Complete:   106.5%

GPS satellite track of today’s route: Day 8 (click!)

Cumulative climb and descent: 25,223ft & 25,028ft

It wasn’t unexpected, but I had the same odd feeling today as I experienced last year as I closed in on John O’Groats; not with the same intensity, granted, but it was there nevertheless.  It is a strange zen-like equanimity born of the tension between elation at finishing the task and regret that a fantastic experience is ending.  Then as now, Veronica will be there to pick up the pieces (she should be arriving as I tickle these keys), and it will be lovely to see her, after admittedly a much shorter parting.  Even the weather has continued to cooperate.  Last night was a little chilly, appropriately enough in Cold Ashton, but our luck continued right to the end today.

Given that the local pub has closed, we had to walk to Folly Farm for supper, a slightly hazardous venture down a busy A-road, but it was worth it. There we met Sarah, mother of six, and an island of calm in a sea of chaos. Folly Farm isn’t really a farm; it’s a magical mystery tour. On the way in, we passed every conceivable animal. Old MacDonald would have been in his element! There were ducks and geese, pigs and dogs, cocks and hens, a giant, kindly, old cob (an armchair, according to Sarah) and a thirty-five year old pony-club pony. Sarah’s mother dropped in during our dinner, as did her sister. He husband called by briefly as well, but mostly we were entertained by her nine year-old son, who was trying to persuade his mother that he was famished and deserved something unhealthy to eat.  He was offered fruit and repeatedly demurred, disappeared off somewhere, only to return for another go later.

Sarah assured us that she and her husband had not specifically continued procreating until they got a son, but they decided anyway that they were going to stop when number six arrived. Meanwhile most of the daughters were somewhere around the great splattering of buildings. There seemed to be dozens of cars around, with people doing all sorts of extraordinary things; there was some sort of ratting expedition in process at the end of the yard. A nineteen year-old daughter had half-a-dozen friends around because there is a barn conversion that serves as a disco. Those were the activities we were told about. Goodness knows what else was going on.

Through all this, Sarah made us dinner, pre-ordered from a special menu sent to us by email. She runs the café as a side-line, supplying walkers on the Cotswold Way and whatever passing trade she can attract. How she has time to do all this amongst all her other daily duties, I do not know. She even gave us a lift back to our B&B in her ancient and alarmingly rattly land-rover.  It’s hard to understand how they make a go of it and I’m fairly sure the finances are wobbly, but I’m equally sure that a number of happy and well-adjusted young adults will emerge from that establishment.

Talking to Sarah did though, make me reflect on the difference between walking alone and in company. With an extrovert like her, there was absolutely no difficulty making conversation, but it remains true that when one is on one’s own it is far easier to open and sustain conversations with strangers than when one is in a group. Alone, the conversations can be quite serious, whereas in a group, they are likely to be jovial. But there is no doubting that walking with John and Yasmin been just enormous fun.

Looking back, is there anything I would have done differently, were I to do it again?  One issue is whether it is better to walk North to South or the other way round. There is certainly an argument that South to North would have meant that one would have experienced the exquisitely pristine Cotswold villages progressively; a sense of moving slowly into wonderland.  Also, the higher hills would have been experienced further into the walk. The prevailing wind would have been from behind, as would the sun. All good reasons, but not enough to persuade Yasmin, who says she really enjoyed the process of experiencing the sudden impact of pure Cotswold to start with, followed by a gradual retreat to normality, (if Bath can be considered normal?).

The length of each section was about right, though one or two days did test the limits. If I were to do it again, I might take one extra day, if only because it might have allowed us to spend more time along the way appreciating some of the more obscure wonders of the Way. Otherwise, I wouldn’t change a thing!  And I would highly recommend the Cotswold Way to anyone with a week to spare.

Thank you for coming along for the ride!  I do hope to catch you next year for more of the same!

A fine Elizabethan manor house in Cold Ashton

Enjoying the soft rolling landscape for the last time on this trip

A final lamb for Phyllis!

Urban Britain returns. That’s Bristol in the distance

Acres of PV for Julian

Approaching Bath. It seems that wode is back in fashion!

An amazing treescape in Bath

Finally, the Royal Crescent comes into view

And the Circus, designed by John Wood the Elder

Veronica joined us for a celebratory meal. We felt great!

Day 7: Old Sodbury to Cold Ashton

Weather:   Sunny with clouds and a cold wind

Distance   covered today: 14.5km ( 9.1 mi)

Last night’s   B&B: The Dog Inn (£57.5)

% Complete:   96.2%

GPS satellite   track of today’s route: Day 7 (click!)

With the whole of Europe in economic chaos, it is very strange to be walking the peaceful and lovely hills and valleys of the Cotswolds. It puts things into perspective. Whatever happens, life will go on, though it is clear that there will be winners and losers. John and Yasmin have made Crete their home and have just invested a considerable sum in their magnificent house there.  They have been watching the unfolding crisis with great interest and they do have a very real interest in the outcome.

Once the worst of my head-ache had partlyworn off, I was fascinated to hear them talk of the problems that might affect them personally if the Greeks leave the Euro.  This was helped by me wanting to listen rather than talk, which itself was something of a necessary change.  John described the lot of many of the (mainly English) expats who currently live in Greece. Most of them have an income or pension from beyond Greece itself, so that a precipitous decline in the value of a new Drachma would not of itself be a cause for concern. There is every chance that inflation would run wild, but that too would not be too much of a problem for the same reason. The real problems would happen if Greece could not find the money to buy the oil they need for electricity production or fuel for cars and trucks. John and Yasmin have excellent insulation, a full tank of heating oil and a small generator, so they could hold out for a while, but the time might come in their isolated retreat when they would face some very difficult choices. Things for the locals would be much worse, and there is a tradition in Greece of the army stepping in….

We speculated about what effect such a scenario might have on Crete itself. For a start, imported food would almost instantly become unaffordable to the locals and would soon disappear from the shelves. The Cretans would very quickly have to revert to growing things themselves, just as they used to do in the good old days. The cheap Drachma would lead to a gradual increase in tourism and Crete would start to look pretty much as it did before this whole flirtation with the developed economies of the North. John thinks that the Cretans would actually have to learn to work again, and in his view the jury is still out on that!

To cap it all, there were rumours in the German press this morning that there is a gathering run on Greek banks, as everyone tries to get their money out of Greece before the music stops. Those banks could fail quite quickly, precipitating the crisis even sooner.

These unwelcome intrusions from the real world seemed somehow more appropriate as we crossed the M4 and gradually the changing scenery made us realise that we are indeed beginning to decompress on re-entry. I remember that feeling so well on reaching the Scottish lowland cities after my sojourn on the Pennines. Not that today didn’t have further delightful surprises for us.  For a start, we passed very close to Badminton. The famous horse trials were cancelled for the year just last week because of all the rain and the sodden ground. And yet we have hardly had to put our rain jackets on during this entire expedition. How lucky have we been??!!

We also passed Dyrham Park with its impressive house and all the attending gardens and church. Earlier we had passed what looked to be an equally impressive pile at Dodington Park, though we could hardly see it through the trees. It becomes obvious that the land between Bristol and London has been very wealthy long before the construction of the M4 corridor.

Talking of which, this is the third time I’ve passed over the M4 on my long-distance walks; first time was on the Ridgeway, then on LEJOG. I almost passed over it a fourth time on the Three Castles Path from Windsor to Winchester, but of course that path starts just south of the motorway in Windsor.  I will have to look further afield for walks in future: I have pretty much cased the joint down here!

Yasmin thinks the next path should be through the winelands of Southern Germany. She says the countryside is beautiful, the B&Bs uniformly excellent and much better value and the wine surprisingly palatable.  She has enjoyed this walk so much that she is prepared to do all the spadework. Sounds good to me!

But first we have to get to Bath to meet Veronica. Tomorrow is our last day, so we will have to celebrate that tonight, and then of course we will have to celebrate being reunited with Veronica tomorrow evening. This really is an exceedingly tough life!

I caught him just after he caught it!

Yasmin powering up yet another hill

Yasmin and John enjoying a picnic lunch

Crossing the M4 with a military convoy below

 

Strip Lynchets, mediaeval furrow and ridge agricultural constructions, unbelievably preserved through the ages

The impressive Dyrham Park

Day 6 Dursley to Old Sodbury

Weather:   Sunny early followed by stormy showers

Distance covered today: 28.0km ( 17.4 mi)

Last night’s B&B: 7 Prospect Place (£34)

% Complete:   87.1%

GPS satellite track of today’s route: Day6 (click!)

This was always going to be a marathon and so it turned out! In total ignorance of the fact that today was John’s birthday, I had managed to design the longest day of our trip, and this happened to coincide with the only bad weather we have experienced so far. Not that it was all that bad, but we did get caught in a couple of showers along the way and it was fascinating watching the storms as they built and blew around us.  The clouds would arrive, seemingly out of nowhere, whipped along by a sudden rising wind. We had seconds to don rain-gear before the storm erupted, complete with hail and driving rain. Yet minutes later we were once again wandering along in bright spring sunshine.

The result of all this stopping and starting, and the fact that the Cotswold Way was doing its usual thing of climbing to the very top of every available hill only to descend to the bottom immediately afterwards, meant that we only arrived at our accommodation for the night, the Dog Inn in Old Sodbury, at 7pm.  There was barely time for a quick bath before getting down to the serious business of celebrating John’s birthday!  Meanwhile, as we approached our destination after hours and hours of walking, the banter inevitably started to take advantage of its colourful name. “Where the hell is the dog?” and “Will we ever get to sodding Sodbury??”

Poor Yasmin! I’m afraid that the urge to celebrate overcame both John and I in no uncertain terms. I remember discussing customer service and food quality (the Dog Inn wasn’t exactly distinguishing itself in these terms) with John in increasingly heated terms, over and over again. John believes that one should help an organisation by making one’s displeasure explicit so they can learn from their mistakes. I tend to follow Veronica’s very English lead of not making a scene, because it’s not going to make any difference anyway, and one doesn’t want to make a fuss, does one?

We went around this argument, colouring increasingly forceful opinion with ever longer anecdotal evidence until things started to blur. Well, at least they started to blur for me!  I do remember that the conversation drifted towards the more personal towards the end, with me in my cups, bemoaning the fact that I have reached the philosophical state where I truly believe that all my experience is now of no value to anyone. John too must have been very far gone, because under normal circumstances, he would have leapt at the opportunity to agree, but I seem to recall that he was trying to persuade me that this wasn’t true!!  After that, who knows what happened. I find myself in bed this morning with a heavy head and an unfinished blog! Ouch!

At least today’s walk is half the length of yesterday. I should have recovered by the end!

John at his breakfast birthday party this morning

No groping in Dursley!!

Only in England!!!!

More gorgeous Cotswold countryside

Yet another celebration of the battle of Waterloo

Two new friends for Veronica

“After the storm”

Weather:   Cloudy to start with a cold wind and sunny later

Distance   covered today: 22.2km ( 13.8 mi)

Last night’s   B&B: Court Farm (£30)

% Complete:   69.5%

GPS satellite   track of today’s route: Day 5 (click!)

Today was supposed to be a relatively gentle day of about 10 miles (16km) after a couple of testing days of around 25km per day.  This clearly lulled John into a false sense of security. Shortly after setting out, he discovered and I confirmed that there were two official alternatives for a portion of today’s route. He became enthusiastic about taking the longer of the two, particularly since the early part of this leg would involve walking along a canal.

He insists that both Yasmin and I had agreed that this was the right decision, and even that we had been enthusiastic about it. True, the canal was very pleasant to start with, and we even met the fellow responsible for restoring the canal, who was working on one of the locks.  He was really interesting about the blend of volunteering and contracting involved and the fact that the work is basically funded by lottery money. That was about it….

We found ourselves on the outskirts of Stroud, with the way ahead blocked by his contractors working on the canal. I was my suggestion that we find an atmospheric little teashop for some elevenses and a brew. To cut a long story short, we were not in that sort of town. We wound up in the café of a giant Sainsbury’s!

Back on the road, we walked twice round the huge superstore trying to orient ourselves, set out across a field rendered almost impassable by deep mud and cow-dung, all mixed up together in a glutinous soup, and finally regained the Cotswold Way high above Stroud in the attractive little village of Selsley.  At this point I was able to inform Yasmin that as a result of John’s little deviation we had already completed 8km, but had a further 15 to go. This, on a day when we were only supposed to do a total of 16!!

John of course would have none of this! In his view, I was somehow equally responsible, and that anyway, it was a very pleasant day and what was I complaining about? Yasmin has remarked that the two of us remind her of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon in a movie we think was called “The Odd Couple”. In fact despite the fact that he is almost always wrong about everything, and I am almost always right, the three of us are getting on like a house on fire, and I can seldom have laughed so much for days on end….

It is true though that walking with others puts a very different complexion on the walking experience. It is already clear that there is much less time for introspection and the experience becomes much more of a social event.  It is necessarily less spontaneous since one is always concerned about the others’ needs and expectations (though John may dispute this in my case!), and so any deviation or change has first to be discussed and agreed. In the evenings, there is less time for reflection and much more time for drinking, also impacting on the gravity of the event.   I managed to lose a significant amount of weight on LEJOG. I doubt I will repeat that here!

In short, it is all a massive holiday and no worse at all for that!

Today I even learned a few unexpected things, for which I must reluctantly credit John. We were walking down his canal and came across an old mill that had been restored. There was a column on the canal shoreline commemorating the various phases of the mill’s existence. It had started off logically enough as a grain mill, moved on through textiles and animal feeds, and finally it had become, of all things, a snowmill! It is indeed the largest manufacturer of artificial snow in Britain, if not Europe, with the product being mainly used in the movie industry but also elsewhere as required! The things one discovers on these trips!

The character of the Way is again in flux. After the wild and atmospheric scarps of the northern sections of the Way, we spent a couple of days looking down at urban development in Cheltenham, Gloucester and Stroud. Now, we seem to be regaining a more rural tranquillity, which may well last until we start getting close to Bath. Always there is the Severn estuary off to our right, with the river gradually getting wider and wider, and the essential, distinguishing quality of the Cotswold Hills remains unchanged. To the east lies a gently declining plain; to the west the craggy escarpment that characterises almost the entire Way. The whole is simply beautiful in its spring colour and the rolling, green English countryside is peaceful and welcoming.

Even the weather has been cooperating! We were expecting finally to have to don waterproofs today, but not a bit of it. After some early mist and cloud, the sun gradually appeared and the weather improved into a simply stunning evening!  Our luck can’t last, can it?

And thereby hangs a tale!

A cat stalking a shark in a tree. Of course!

This post commemorated the mill’s evolution from grain to cloth to animal feed to, of all things, SNOW!

Genteel gentrification of the canal environment, but not unattractive!

This extremely attractive mill is now the council admin office. Sign of the times

Unrelenting forest in unremitting beauty!

With always the Severn for company, growing ever larger!

An enormous oak resentfully amongst the rape

Day 4, Birdlip to Randwick

Weather:   Cool and sunny with a gentle breeze

Distance   covered today: 23.5km ( 14.6 mi)

Last night’s   B&B: Royal George Hotel (£89)

% Complete:   55.5%

GPS satellite   track of today’s route: Day4 (click!)

We are already more than half way and time is flying by.  I seem to have spent more time preparing for the walk than actually doing it!  So far the arrangements are working out OK. There are the usual glitches. Tonight for instance, the pub at which I had planned that we would have supper isn’t serving meals on a Sunday night, so our landlord has agreed to ferry us off to an alternative and to ferry us back afterwards.

All of this reminds me so much of LEJOG. The B&Bs so far have been grander, but tonight’s version is almost identical to countless establishments that I encountered on my travels last year. The elderly people who live here are obviously doing it to help with the house-keeping, and the effort for them is not insubstantial. The house has been here for a very long time, and so has much of the furniture. They won’t be able to keep it up much longer.

As a further reminder of my travels a year ago, we had our first sighting of the Severn Estuary bridges today. It must have been almost exactly a year ago that I was approaching the bridges from the other direction. There is generally a Topograph (a circular, inlaid map with arrows pointing to points of interest recognisable in the distance) at each major viewpoint. I have been looking out across the Severn Valley to the Brecon Beacons, the Black Mountains and many other topographical features that accompanied me last year, when, quite coincidentally, John was accompanying me on my travels northwards on Offa’s Dyke.  Strange that we should be together again at exactly this time…

Saying goodbye to Anna this morning was painful. Just as I had anticipated she would, she livened up our walk yesterday and she delighted both John and Yasmin. By the time she took her leave they were all already concocting plans to meet in Crete. John is offering all sorts of business facilitation and coaching services and Anna thinks she might benefit from them. Meanwhile Anna has been telling John and Yasmin just how they might use modern methodologies to promote their new venture in Crete. It remains to be seen whether anything will come of it, but who knows? The only real problem John has with her is that if she had scared herself so much with her skydiving exploits why on earth did she keep doing it? He clearly still has a way to go to understand our Anna!

We are just back from the pub and John is effervescent!  Our landlord is driving a £50k Landrover with all the mod cons including air suspension, and my bathroom is filthy!  Yasmin says she dropped something on the carpet and the dust exploded! The landlord tells us he has a cleaning lady in twice a week, and it really shows!  His wife is severely disabled by arthritis. She can’t do much around the B&B, so it just doesn’t get done! He tells us he has a pension as a Mechanical Engineer, so that there is definitely money around, but do these people really have the interest and ability to run a decent B&B? Breakfast tomorrow should be interesting!  I suspect John’s close association with Trip Adviser is going to be put to full use.  For me it is interesting that this is the first dirty B&B I have come across in all my travels in the UK.

Well, there is always a first for everything!

Cooper’s Hill. Scene of the annual cheese-rolling and suicidal cheese chasing competition. The slope is terrifying!

Today involved walking through endless, beautiful Beech woods, passing streams of disaffected Duke of Edinburgh campers

This is Colin, the dry-stone wall builder. He was a fount of info on the craft and a man at home with his work

Painswick, a wool town, once rich, now less so, but with some very redeeming features, including a timber-frame post office, once featured on a stamp issued in 1997 celebrating Sub-postmasters

Lunchtime in Painswick and a cool jazz band in the sunshine. Bliss!!

Ancient Yew trees in a unique churchyard in Painswick

Kevin and John approaching the half-way mark of the Cotswold Way

This old pensioner was cutting his grass along the way. He introduced himself as Dennis, The Menace, from Venice. We called him the Gondolier!

We came across this, the Cromwell Stone, commemorating the lifting of the siege of Gloucester during the Civil War. It was illegible…

Out of the woods, stunning views of the grasslands

Approaching our destination for the night, Randwick under the flag of St George

 

Day 3: Cleeve Hill to Birdlip

Weather:   Cool and sunny with a gentle breeze

Distance   covered today: 25.5km ( 15.9 mi)

Last night’s   B&B: Cleeve Hill House Hotel (£60)

% Complete:   40.7%

GPS satellite   track of today’s route: Day3 (click)   I thought that today might not yield much.  From the route, I knew that we would be constantly in the lovely rolling hills and craggy cliffs of the upper Cotswold Way, very definitely away from the architectural magic of the last couple of days. I also thought that having my daughter, Anna with us might constrain the conversation and present its own problems. I thought that maybe today would be a polite interlude, with introspection being the favoured mode of behaviour. I’m clearly not good at predicting these things. We did indeed have an early pipe opener as we scaled Cleeve Hill and I was roundly abused, with no justification, for taking the walking party straight up the hill to the top, ignoring the gentler slopes that would have achieved the objective but at a lower heart rate. I claimed that I had experience in these things and was criticised by all. I began to realise that there was developing an unholy alliance between John and Anna in which I was the enemy and the obvious target, and I might well have to protect myself from their double-barrelled assault. Fortunately, Yasmin is just never drawn into these jousts and, as the only mature adult amongst us, could be relied upon to keep the rational calm. We were embarked on by far the longest leg of the trip so far, and the others were understandably apprehensive, none more so than Anna who was concerned that she might not make it to the end at all. She is exhausted after a hard week of work, with all sorts of short-term issues and a horrible head-ache.   I was hugely complimented that she had made the effort at all. Though if she and John were going to join forces to attack her father, perhaps I would have to review her inheritance! As it turned out, our walk was peaceful and relaxing in the warm sunshine.  Without trying we swapped walking partners all day and the company was friendly and stimulating and the countryside varied between stunning views down the escarpment (with endless views of Cheltenham as we seemed to circle it for ages), interspersed with relaxed ventures through the woods. Everywhere there were flowers and butterflies. And also those strange kamikaze black insects from last year that have eyes only for each other and may well fly into your mouth if you don’t close it! The real interest of the day lay in the conversation over dinner tonight. John and Anna launched forth into a spirited discussion of their business experience. I found myself being infinitely proud of both of them. In many ways they have been forged on the same anvil. John had much to say to Anna that may be useful in her business career, and I felt that he was impressed at how much she understood about the dark arts of management. All the while, when each of them went too far, Yasmin was on hand to drag them back to reality with an understanding but very firm hand. In the end, I had nothing to add, and I left, secure in the knowledge that my eldest daughter knows her mind and can hold her views to even the most searing scrutiny.  No doubt, I have not heard the last of it from John. Anna leaves us tomorrow morning and no doubt the psychoanalysis will then commence. If there are any failings, I am sure they will be traced back to me!  I am forewarned! All of us on Cleeve Hill, the highest point of the Cotswold Way The crags on the edge of the escarpment with cheltenham below John in yet another phographer pose! What is this? A baby lamb rushed over to Anna, presumably looking for a feed rather than recognising maternal instincts That is a vertical path ahead, and Anna seems happy about it! I wasn’t! The fingernails of the non-fingernail biting Anna, displyed proudly top her Dad, who was mightily impressed! Especially under the circumstances! The three of them on a bench above Cheltenham The Devil’s Chimney! An outcrop from mining times… What is this? I always wondered where GCHQ was! Interesting

Day 2: Stanton to Cleeve Hill

Weather:   cool and cloudy with sunshine later

Distance   covered today: 21.2km ( 13.2 mi)

Last night’s   B&B: The Old Post House (£45)

%   Complete:24.7%

GPS satellite   track of today’s route: Day2 (click!)

Writing this blog can be a frustrating process!  It transpires that since I am not as familiar with WordPress as I was with Blogger, I have not yet managed to master it. This, combined with some very dodgy internet connections and a full schedule throughout the day and the evening, has led to some issues with the blog. I still can’t work out why yesterday’s photos came out all elongated, let alone fix the problem. I was just in the process of doing so when the connection went down. I’ve wasted an hour and got absolutely nowhere!  I haven’t even started to address the issue of why the link to EveryTrail isn’t working!  Last year, at least I had four months to sort myself out. This year, I’ll be finished before I solve the first problem!  On the other hand the sun is shining, we had an excellent walk today, my daughter, Anna is joining us tonight for the day tomorrow, so perhaps I should stop complaining and just apologise for my ineptitude. I’ll get there!

Today, we took a pragmatic approach to the walk. The excited canter of the first day developed into a steady trot; a sort of maturing process. There was a sense of leaving the unreality of the “frozen in aspic” tourist Cotswolds to the real world in Winchcombe. We had higher hills to climb and a longer distance to walk, though we did at one stage take a shortcut to avoid a circular deviation on the official path, which didn’t seem to make any sense at all! Our conversation matured as well, mostly because I did less talking, hard as that may be to believe.  We even stopped for lunch at a teashop rather than a pub!

It was there that we met Kelly.  Julian would probably see this as synchronicity, but we had been discussing career choices since John and Yasmin arrived.  We had approached the subject from a number of angles, each of us (I, endlessly!) recounting how it happened that we ended up in the careers we had. We looked at it from the perspective of the changed world, where companies offer less in the expectation that employees will leave, and where employees promise less in the expectation that companies will not look after them.  This vicious circle of alienation is compounded in the current recession with its promise of a debt-laden decade of decline in the western world, by a sense that if neither the state nor your employer feels any sense of responsibility to your long-term welfare, then perhaps you should take things very much into your own hands and do whatever it is that turns you on.

Kelly owns the teashop. She is a well-educated graduate, attractive, articulate and intelligent; a refugee from London, where, from her accent and her bearing (and the fact that her parents live in Surrey), we could deduce that in a previous generation, had she wanted a career, she would have joined a big company on the basis of her assets and entered the graduate programme. Her choice? She found a teashop for sale in Winchcombe, applied to the bank of Mum & Dad for a loan, bought it, redecorated it, learned all about tea and cake, and opened her business to the public. She said she knew about the catering business from years of serving in bars and restaurants as a scholar and a student. She loves tea, and she loves cake, and she likes being her own boss. She wanted to combine these things to make a business that was out of the ordinary, using her personality and skills to attract people who would welcome it (and no doubt pay a premium to get it). Hers is a stylish, welcoming business offering the mundane and the exotic, and she made us feel instantly at home. I was interested to note that her shop was located close to the edge of town where the many walkers on the Cotswold Way would be gasping for a cuppa just as they entered town, analogous to something I learned early in my career about the optimum location of service stations (first on the left on the way out of town)!

We decided Kelly was a thoroughly modern woman. She may not make a fortune and I worried whether she would ever save enough for a pension that would allow her the freedom that I now enjoy to pursue the things that interest me.  But she is far less constrained than I was for my 34 years in corporate prison. She may not face the career vs. family compromises that so many modern women must endure.  She lives in a truly beautiful place which is in gracious and aesthetic harmony with its environment.

Tomorrow we climb to the top of Cleeve Hill before heading off on the longest day yet, to Birdlip. I am though happy in the knowledge that for me it will pass in an instant because I will walk in the company of my daughter. I will rue the passing of every mile.

She, on the other hand, may find it more arduous!

A blurry view from my bedroom this morning, but more evocative than you might think

Stanway House

 

Furrow and ridge fields all over, dating from mediaeval times

 

It may be environmentally incorrect, but the rape is photographically electric!

 

Yet another monastery destroyed by Oliver Cromwell. This is Hailles. According to legend, he sat on a promontory above it and watched it burn!

 

Kelly in her tearoom

 

Winchcombe and its contrasting yet harmonious architectural themes

 

Retired racehorse making eyes at Yasmin. I don’t blame him!

 

His brothers. We are clearly approaching Cheltenham. I offered one a mint and he knew not what to do with it. Clearly he doesn’t live in Surrey!

 

More of the colour of rape

 

John and Yasmin preparing to practice 104 of the Karma Sutra in the Barrow of Belas Knap near Cleeve Hill

 

Day 1 Chipping Campden to Stanton

Weather:   Cloudy with rain showers and strong wind

Distance   covered today: 18.1km ( 11.3 mi)

Last night’s   B&B: The Court (£60)

%   Complete:11.4%

GPS satellite   track of today’s route: Day1 (click!)

It may be a little early to judge, but already the feel of the walk is taking shape. We walked today from delightful Chipping Campden through perfect Broadway to what is apparently the most quintessential of Cotswold villages, Stanton.  Not a stone is out of place, every lawn is manicured, every planting thoughtfully planned. There is an otherworldly feel about it. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Broadway, where even the shop displays look as if they have been designed by the town’s tourism committee.

Once upon a very long time ago, I read a satirical article, I think by Alan Coren, though I can’t remember for sure, about the way England was developing.  It was a time of economic distress with increasing unemployment as a result of the rapid decline of the manufacturing sector and well before the big bang in the City. The author noted that the only growth industry was tourism and the only thing that England had to sell was its past, but the country was failing to make the most of the opportunity.  He argued that England could corner a unique market by doing almost nothing. The idea was that the country and all its inhabitants would just become a gigantic theme park where everyone lived as their ancestors had done hundreds of years ago. There would be the minor inconveniences of having to wear old clothes and ignore tourists who come to look at you in your own home as you go about your daily bread-making and soil tilling. He thought the English would be very good at this because their attitudes were anyway locked in the past and they generally distrust the future. I couldn’t help thinking that the author must have imagined this scenario when he was travelling through Broadway some day long ago. And I bet the place hasn’t changed an iota ever since.

Having said that, it remains indescribably beautiful. The unique architecture is facilitated by the immediate presence of ‘oolitic’ limestone rock which has been used for centuries for building in the Cotswolds. This limestone is unusually malleable which has enabled stone masons to carve out the most intricate designs including elaborate decorative detail and imposing residence frontages in a competitive frenzy. But for me, the most interesting feature is how all the architecture is at one.  It just fits. The imposing, sumptuous façade of a rich man’s house might be in close proximity to a row of more humble dwellings, but the unifying elements of the architecture make the whole simply harmonious. Nowhere is this more evident than among the almshouses and manor houses in Chipping Campden.

The unifying theme is evident within the architectural elements of individual houses as well. For instance, most of the roofs are made of limestone “slate”.  In days of yore, limestone rocks were immersed in water in winter. The water would freeze and the rocks would then be heated quickly, resulting in a clean fracture which could be used as roofing material. The large “slates” were placed low on the roofs, with the smaller “slates” near to the ridge. For me, looking at this from street level, the effect was of a receding perspective, making the roofs look much larger than in fact they are, though this must of course have been unintentional.  The fact that the roofs and the walls are built of the same material adds to the coherence of the whole.  Getting planning permission to do something different must be hell!

Outside the villages, seen from a distance, the built environment seems to fit perfectly into the natural milieu as well. The honey coloured stone is at peace with its environment.  It’s almost as if human intervention has improved the natural surroundings and that is not something I can say of most other places I’ve been!

The early part of the walk today required the traditional trudge up a hill out of town, but this time with an unexpected benefit at the top. For the first time, we were able to see the view down the side of the escarpment which will accompany us most of the way to Bath. Also, interestingly, we came to Dover’s Hill which is the original site of the Olimpick Games. These games have been held here for centuries and include all sorts of exotic games including the origin of sack races and a rather ominous sounding game called shin-kicking.  At the time I was waving my walking poles around while expounding voluminously on some esoteric subject and managed to catch John amidships with a pole. Quick as a flash, he informed me, through his pain, that walking pole-spearing was not one of the Olimpick Games!

And on a more sombre note, I have to inform you sadly, that in the competition of route-finding, which some may remember from Offa’s Dyke, today, by sleight of hand and superior negotiating skill, John has edged ahead in the competition with a score of 4-2 to him. This, despite all my efforts and all my electronics and him with only a 1:50,000 map that he had specially printed with my name on it!  I will certainly have to up my game tomorrow!

The view from my bedroom window last night

 

The start of the Cotswold Way

 

The site of the Olimpick Games

 

John and his downloaded OS map. Note the title!!

 

Forget-me-nots, Cowslips and a Dandelion

 

What is this? Yasmin wants to know and John can’t help!

 

A lamb for Phyllis!

 

Broadway Tower, of William Morris and the ‘Arts and Craft’ Movement fame

 

John in photographer mode

 

Yasmin

 

Broadway

 

Exquisite Stanton

 

 

Day 0 Chipping Campden

Weather notwithstanding, we’re here! The outlook for the next few days is actually improving, even if tomorrow looks foul.  There is, though a high out in the Atlantic, moving towards the UK, and hopefully it will stall when it gets here and spring will truly start! Can I possibly be as lucky as I was last year?

It seems unlikely. Certainly the omens yesterday weren’t initially that great.  I went to Gatwick to collect John and Yasmin on their flight from Crete, and at the airport my rimless glasses disintegrated in my hands while I was trying to clean them. I couldn’t see to fit them together again and flailed around hopelessly until eventually I managed to do a temporary repair.  After John and Yasmin arrived I discovered I had lost my parking ticket, for which the standard replacement fee is £40, an exorbitant amount for such a minor misdemeanour.  With John’s help, I retraced my steps but to no avail. Ultimately I gave up and prepared to pay the fee at a parking machine, wondering if these disasters were some sort of augury for the future of this venture.  I pressed the “missing ticket” button and a voice demanded to know my car registration number and arrival time. Seconds later, he had located my car arriving on CCTV, and I paid the correct parking fee of a couple of quid and was out of there!  I didn’t know whether I was more worried that tracing every movement of every individual and car in the UK has become such a humdrum affair, or delighted that I had saved a minor fortune!  Meanwhile, back at home, my optician cemented my glasses back together in minutes and all was well! So, is this good luck or a bad luck story?  Too early to tell!

The journey to the positively charming Chipping Campden was uneventful, the only sad bit being the parting from Veronica at journey’s end. It cannot though compare to the emotional low I experienced just over a year ago at the start of LEJOG, and of course, this is just a strenuous holiday in the rain, as opposed to the journey of discovery that I was embarking on last year!  We have already cased the joint as the pictures below will attest, selected our pub for supper tonight (The Eight Bells), and John and Yasmin are thereafter heading for a music recital in the local church, while I try to find a way onto the net to post this blog.  The village is undeniably beautiful, but the most interesting building so far is our own B&B.

Sir Baptist Hicks was a London merchant who made a fortune as a money lender in London to King James I amongst others early in the 17^th Century. He built a huge house in Campden and various other buildings including the gatehouses, the market square and the almshouses pictured below. His stables may have stood on the site of our B&B.  His great house was burned to the ground in 1645, possibly by Royalist troops to prevent Cromwell’s troops from using its facilities and it was never rebuilt. After Sir Baptist died, his properties including our B&B were left to his daughter Juliana, who had married one Edward Noel, who later became the first Viscount Campden.  The stables were converted into a house for Lady Juliana, and it has remained in the ownership of the Noel family ever since. Our hostess is indeed a direct descendant of the Noel family.  The house changed hands between family members, and in 1982, our hostess’s recently widowed mother married Peregrine Fellows, the father of Julian Fellowes who you may well recognise is the author of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey. The house is full of paintings and photograph of this illustrious lineage, most of which were inherited from her father Lord Dormer. The Dormers were a recusant Catholic family and apparently one of the oldest families in England. It is her hope that her eldest grandson, Charlie Defries will eventually inherit the house, continuing an unbroken line of ownership since it was first built around 1613.  We will breakfast tomorrow in a rather special dining room!

Tomorrow we make for the village of Stanton, and despite the weather, I’m looking forward to the off. The one serious issue is that John has hurt his back, wielding a chain-saw in Crete.  Although he is putting a brave face on it, I am seriously concerned that he may not be well enough for a walk this demanding. At least there are plenty of villages in the area, so if he has to call it a day, we shouldn’t be too far from a taxi.  Let’s hope I’m right……

Sir Baptist’s Market Square

Sir Baptist’s Almshouses

The Gates to the big house

A beautiful house in Campden with a “Cloud Hedge” (Veronica’s description, just before she left for home)

A beautiful farmhouse in Campden

Flying the flag in the village centre

The Next Challenge

Last year I completed the walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats, a marathon that took the best part of four months, including rest days. It ignited in me a real affection for walking in the glorious English countryside. I also learned a few lessons that to almost all observers will have seemed completely obvious from the start!

Firstly, LEJOG was a marathon!  Maybe shorter walks are more sustainable, especially if my marriage is to survive! Secondly, despite all my prior protestations, the weather turns out to be an important factor in the enjoyment of the walk. I was phenomenally lucky on LEJOG. I walked through the driest April on record and we have now just experienced the wettest April in recorded history. Even if that continues into May, at least the pain of it will be of short duration! The one hundred mile walk should take us no more than a week. Thirdly, the walking is much more enjoyable if someone else carries your pack, so I have engaged the services of SherpaVan to assist in this regard and my shoulders are already thanking me in anticipation. Fourthly, I have decided that for all its other virtues, Blogger is less user-friendly than WordPress, especially for those who choose to comment on my progress so that I have decided this is an appropriate time to migrate. And finally, I am delighted to welcome John and Yasmin who have agreed to join me on this trip, though time will tell whether they will regard this as an act of insanity or otherwise…..

Additionally, despite the short duration of this adventure, our daily distances will be for me at least, a serious challenge….  Especially after a few months of relative slothfulness!

During LEJOG, the sheer emotional demand of the journey meant that many of my posts were, depending on your point of view, self-indulgent and introverted verbosity, and less of a travelogue than a diary. I hope to learn from that, though I can’t guarantee it. At this juncture, its hard to tell whether sinking the odd glass of red with John and Yasmin will open or close the floodgates. Time will tell.

Meanwhile if any unfortunate traveller has just happened on this blog and would like to have a look at the LEJOG site on Blogger, the url is http://corrigendus.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/day-0-penzance.html

As always, your comments are enthusiastically encouraged. Your company is most welcome!

A sample shot from LEJOG just to test how the media uploading works