Cotswold Way

We decided that, to make some progress, we would utilise the half term and press on with the walk for our fifth stage of this endeavour. Since we have brought the Cotswold Way journey to our doorstep, we thought that the weather might support a second successive day and I am pleased to report that it did - just! We were delighted to have the old team back together for this stage, as Kyle joined us for most of the day (he had somewhere to be in the afternoon). We hopped on the 62 bus from the end of our road and then the 882 so far as Birdlip (our finishing point yesterday). We retraced our steps from the Royal George pub bus stop, downhill to the road's the intersection with the route and then continued down the path from there, where we proceeded to give up much of our altitude. We knew that could mean only one thing; more uphill later! The Cotswold Way is very well route-marked, as I have mentioned before, but I do love some of the comical markers one can find along the way, some...

The forecast for Thursday was showery at first, soon clearing up. It was certainly chilly as we headed down to the first bus to Cheltenham. A Starbucks coffee later and onto the second bus and we were already a little warmer. As we headed up the walk from Linover woods car park it just got warmer still. By this point there was no rain and just a moderate northeast wind at our backs. We soon climbed to the top of the hill and across the top heading southwest. Near Wistley, or perhaps Chatcombe woods, there seemed to be hunters out shooting. As we descended toward the A436 Kilkenny road we left them behind. I had hopes of a bacon bap in the coach diner that usually sits in the layby there, but sadly that was not to be, as it was missing. Instead, we headed on up the lane across the roundabout toward the east end of Leckhampton hill, with its wonderful view over the golf course, as well as the vista back the way we'd come. Pretty soon we were strolling across a hill I know very well a...

We chose a fine day for our third stage of the walk; virtually perfect, blue sky, sunny, yet not too hot (low single figures ºC). Having (again) found that buses were not running on the displaced bank holiday, we checked out prices for a taxi to get us there from Cheltenham. We were pleasantly surprised to find it a very reasonable £19 for the seven mile run, not much more than three bus tickets and much more comfortable. Marius was soon on his way to collect us and we were off. We took the drop off near the town centre; now quite familiar to us from the  three or so visits, the most recent being only four days ago. We set off from the point we'd left the route previously, heading down Vineyard Street south, then striking out across the fields. The 'Way is marked very clearly at close intervals, so navigation is quite straightforward. We were soon heading uphill fairly steeply, the route leading through woods up to Belas Knap burial chamber. From Belas Knapp, the 'Way heads...

Welcome dear reader, back to our journey! As you may recall, I am writing this as an omnibus 'catch-up' edition of our Cotswold Way adventure and so, this stage of the walk is only a couple of days old in my mind and I should be more familiar with the events as they unfolded. The weather in recent days and weeks has been very poor and to be honest, at the outset of the holiday season I for one had not really expected much by way of opportunity to progress our story onward. However, after Christmas and all the bustle was fading, such a day did offer itself and that day was Thursday 29th December 2022, the last suitable walking day of the year. Once again Kyle had scheduled work, and once again he was unable to join us, so Lara, Elena and I set off on our merry way to pick up the route where we had left off, which was at Stanton. This time however, we were careful to note that buses would be running and we decided it was a more psychologically pleasing idea to park the car at our...

"Now the light falls across the open field, leaving the deep lane shuttered with branches dark in the afternoon." TS Elliot So, we had long planned to do this, but how best to go about it? The CW is nominally about 102 miles long, so clearly for us it was not going to be likely we would find a 10+ day period when we could attack it in a oner! Nevertheless, it did seem to take a long while to get ourselves organised to take it on, even in short bite-sized stages. Finally, on a whim the day came when we got under way. That day was Thursday 2nd of June 2021. I am now writing this up, six months later, so it's probably going to be a bit shorter (thank God I hear you gasp), as I try to rack my brain, with the aid of some photos, to recall the journey. The conundrum with a task like the CW is a logistical one; whether to drive to A, walk to B, then somehow repatriate the car, or the other way round, or some other method. We started the Cotswold Way by doing the above, i.e. we d...