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