Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
route to follow. It rises through more large open fields and passes beneath
a line of high-voltage power cables.
Eventually the track takes you through a gate and then offers several
path options. Take the right branch ahead, which leads over a rough,
moorland-like area brightened with much gorse. This is the start of
Cleeve
Common,
the highest land on the Cotswold Way. Ahead you will notice
three tall transmitter towers which will appear and disappear with annoy-
ing frequency throughout the long loop of the common.
Note
Soon after join-
ing Cleeve Common it would be possible to break away south-westward on a series of
tracks and paths south of the towers to rejoin the way above Prestbury, thus shortcutting
the route, but missing some of the loveliest views. In emergencies, however, this short
cut could be a useful exit from the exposed common.
Many tracks criss-cross the common, but at all junctions there are dis-
tinctive marker posts to guide you, the direction to maintain being roughly
north-west. On coming to a steep and narrow cleave, you descend to the
Washpool, a small pond probably used as a sheep-dip. Passing alongside
it, the way then curves round the foot of the hills keeping left of a wall-en-
closed woodland.
BELAS KNAP
A fine example of the chambered tombs, or long barrows, of the Severn-Cotswold
Group. The name means hilltop beacon, which suggests the site was used by the Sax-
ons, for it stands above Winchcombe, which was occupied during Saxon times. Belas
Knap, a wedge-shaped mound measuring some 178ft (54m) long, 60ft (18m) wide
and about 13ft (4m) at its highest point, dates from about 3000
BC
. At its northern end
is a false portal with two horns lined with drystone walling and blocked by a massive
slab. When it was excavated in 1863, the remains of five children and the skull of an
adult were discovered behind the portal. There are two chambers along the eastern
side, one on the west and another at the southern end, reached by shallow passages
walled with stones laid in almost identical fashion to many of the drystone walls seen
along the Cotswold Way. No less than 26 burials were found to have been made in
the paired north-east and north-west chambers, and the remains of two males and
two females in the south-eastern chamber. The 1863 excavation also revealed Roman
coins and pottery.
The path forks, with one branch heading right over a stile into the walled
Postlip enclosure. Do not cross this, but instead bear left to find a way-
mark post directing a narrow path steeply up the hillside. As a consolation
