THE COTSWOLD WAY & HEADING SOUTH
From Chipping Campden to Bath & from Bath to Chesil Beach
THE COTSWOLD WAY
There was a plan: it’s just that what we ended up doing was a different plan. The original plan was to try to do a walk in every county in England and after some pleasant treks in Lincolnshire and Wiltshire, we walked a part of the Cotswold Way in Gloucestershire. Then in 2006, my cathedral visiting friend A turned 50, and we joined a group of his friends and relations for a celebration that involved walking another part of the Cotswold Way.
We started at Birdlip Hill, rising high above Cheltenham, and continued along the escarpment, through woods and pretty villages, with magnificent views over the Severn valley towards Gloucester. We stopped for afternoon tea at a little café in the middle of nowhere, run by a frail, seemingly confused, old lady who got our orders completely mixed up. It turned out that her son was something big in the annual cheese rolling festival that takes place on nearby Cooper’s Hill. It also transpired that the prices on the menu were rough guides, because the final bill was far in excess of what it should have been, but you can’t argue with a frail, seemingly confused old lady, so we paid up. I suspect she wasn’t as confused as we thought!
When my wife, Sue, and I met up with A and his wife H, we talked about what a great walk we’d had. A suggested we abandon our ‘County” plan and have a “Walk the Cotswold Way” plan, and before long we found ourselves at the start of the 102 mile National Trail in Chipping Camden. We are not striding out walkers who cover great distances, so it took us ten separate walks to reach the city of Bath at the southern end. Along the way, we climbed Broadway Tower, perched high on a hill, passed the remains of Hailes Abbey and visited the ‘Queen of the Cotswolds”, Painswick where the churchyard used to have 99 yew trees. Legend had it that the devil would pull up any 100th tree, so when the church was given one as part of the millennium celebrations, they had a dilemma. They planted it anyway but so far, the devil hasn’t kept his side of the bargain.
On the southern stretches we found two monuments, one dedicated to a son of the Duke of Beaufort who served at Waterloo, the other in honour of William Tyndale, a translator of the New Testament who was born nearby and who was executed as a heretic by strangulation. The walk also passes the English Civil War battlefield of Landsdowne before descending into Bath. Toasting our completion of the walk with a glass of bubbly in front of Bath Abbey, whilst studiously ignoring the alcohol free zone notices, we congratulated ourselves on our achievement. We’d fulfilled our ‘Walk the Cotswold Way” plan, but I had an even better plan formulating, a ‘Let’s Walk the Length of England’ plan. Time to share it with the others.
HEADING SOUTH
The 17th century George Hotel stands proudly on the main street of the Somerset town of Frome. We had booked a couple of nights there in order to continue our walk from Bath to the south coast, a journey of 75 miles that we would complete in a leisurely nine walks. We set off from Bath where we had completed the Cotswold Way eighteen months earlier and after a stiff climb up onto Combe Down, we descended to the Colliers’ Way, a cycle and footpath that runs along two disused railway lines. This took us first to Radstock, an old mining town, and then dog-legged to Frome. One doesn’t generally associate Somerset with mining but the Somerset Coalfield was still producing coal until 1973. The walks were quite easy going on the flat surfaced trackway. At the time, we were unaware we were in nursery rhyme land. The walk passed the village of Kimersdon, traditionally the site of Jack and Jill’s hill, whilst nearby Mells was the home of ‘Little Jack Horner.’
A few months later, we returned to Great Elm, a village we’d passed through on the Colliers’ Way, and there we connected with the Macmillan Way that would take us onwards. At Nunney, we found a fabulous, moated medieval castle which we admired briefly before plunging down a narrow footpath between high hedges and trees laden with damsons. We filled our pockets to bursting. When planning walks, I try to ensure there is somewhere on our route to eat around lunchtime, so when I discovered a newly opened delicatessen and restaurant in Castle Cary, I thought it would be an ideal place to eat. We found a table and explored the enticing menu, accompanied by the gentle strains of Sting’s song Fields of Gold. When the waitress arrived, it appeared the restaurant was so newly opened that there only about four things actually available on the menu. Nevertheless, we ordered and waited, whilst that lovely song Fields of Gold filled the air. When the food eventually came, it was delicious and we munched away accompanied by, you’ve guessed, the only song they had managed to put on their playlist – Fields of Gold!
There is a rather impressive Iron Age hill fort on Cadbury Hill and after admiring it from the car, we parked up at South Cadbury to arrange a taxi to take us to the start of our walk. Rather fortuitously, the place we parked was directly behind a taxi. No hanging around today, we thought as we rang the driver. We were wrong: she was still in bed and we had to sit around for half an hour or so whilst she got up. Our journey south took us to places we’d never been before like Sherbourne, a delightful Dorset town, and locations we’ve never heard of such as Evershot, Chetnow and Maiden Newton. Eventually we arrived at the village of Abbotsbury and from there it was a short stroll down a sandy lane to the vast expanse of Chesil Beach. We sat on the pebbles, dipped our fingers in the sea and then headed back for a well-earned drink in Abbotsbury. Our thoughts turned from the beautiful south to the next part of our journey –the grim north.