Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to enjoy. Stay high as you wind leftwards (heading east), then up a slope
onto a hilltop field surrounded by the low earth ramparts of
Little Down
Hill Fort
. This is the last of many such Iron Age sites visited since leaving
Chipping Campden.
LITTLE DOWN HILL FORT
The most westerly point on the Cotswold Way, this is an Iron Age site of about 15
acres (6 hectares) with a rampart and single ditch still easily identified.
Across the field bear right along the grassy rampart. On reaching a wall
the path curves left along the scarp edge again, with views through the
trees down to the River Avon, then it brings you to Bath Racecourse.
Continue along the scarp to a topograph at a prominent vantage point
known as Prospect Stile, from where you look into the great bowl of coun-
tryside in which Bath lies nestling among hills that seem to gather in an
amphitheatre, as if to hold it in an embrace. As this is the first view of
Bath, with it comes the knowledge that the long walk is nearing its close.
But Bath is not the only object worth gazing on from Prospect Stile; a
much better focus is tree-crowned Kelston Round Hill to the south, and out
to the west where a huge expanse of low-lying land is invariably patched
with cloud-shadows. You gaze down to meadows and trees 600ft (180m)
below, and out to a watery dazzle of light. This is a place on which to
linger, for the view from Prospect Stile is one to savour (grid ref: 713683).
