Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
These are just two random vignettes that spill unbidden from a host of
memories gathered along the Cotswold Way, but each time I've walked
the route end to end - and others when I've snatched isolated sections
for the sheer pleasure of being there - I've been seduced by the region's
special attractions. There are the curving bays and spurs of the escarp-
ment, the beech-crowned heights, open breezy commons, deeply cut dry
valleys, mile upon mile of drystone walling from which anxious wrens dart
and where snails cling limpet-like to the verticals. I think of honey-col-
oured cottages, roses wild and nurtured, carpets of bluebells, ramsons
and wood anemones, kestrels hovering head-down above the cropped turf,
larks warbling from dawn to dusk, a cumulus of sheep on the brow of a
distant hill. I remember old churches, Civil War battlefields, and the even
older burial mounds and hill forts that pepper the route. I recall beams
of sunlight shafting onto the River Severn, clouds rolling over the Black
Mountains far away. And the peace. Not silence, but peace. The peace of
a countryside comfortable with itself.
A walker's landscape is both a powerful stimulant and an inspiration.
Certainly that is true where memories and dreams intertwine in a complex
of pleasures on completion of the Cotswold Way.
THE COTSWOLD WAY
The Cotswold Way measures 102 miles (164km) on its journey from Chip-
ping Campden to Bath, and it's a devious route - a switchback, stutter-
ing, to-ing and fro-ing, climbing and falling walk. One moment you're wan-
dering along the scarp edge, with toy-sized farms and villages scattered
across the plains far below, the next you're heading down to them - to
explore a magical village, or a small market town with age in its streets,
whose cottages are 'faintly warm and luminous, as if they knew the trick
of keeping the lost sunlight of centuries glimmering about them'. Then you
head up again, zigzagging back and forth in order to capture the best the
wolds can offer.
