Gushing about the Cotswolds just like anyone else

I am writing this, as I wrote the last chapter, on a picnic table in the farm’s back garden.  I guess it must be a little cooler tonight, because the bees have already hushed.  On my drive home this evening, I spotted a supermarket, and had a sudden burning desire to shop for dinner and “eat in” so to speak.  I’d had a substantial lunch, details of which will follow in their proper place, so I just picked up a little bread, cheese, broccoli, and a couple of bottles of ale I hadn’t seen before.  I’ve made a little picnic of these while reading and then typing away.  I’m still sipping at the second bottle of ale.

 

My 1967 guide book to the Cotswolds recommends the Coln valley as a destination for sightseers.  It is reasonably nearby – the Coln flows into the Thames at Lechlade, home to the Trout where I’d had dinner on Monday night, so I practically already knew my way.  My map showed a rich network of footpaths up the valley that I could piece together into a good day’s walking.  Before 9 am, I was parked in a ridiculous but clearly legal spot in the village of Coln St Aldwyn, determined to really poke my way up this valley, seeing a lot of each village and relaxing.  Just to kill any suspense in those of you who know me well, I actually managed to do this, clocking my slowest day yet and having a wonderful time.

 

As I did for Pennine scenery, let me try to do a condensation of standard Coln valley villages. 

 

Each one has a church – small, attractive, and old with lots of carved wood and stone and either stained glass or clear glass that harvests the views around.  Every one I tried to enter was open for the gawping and they cleverly labeled the donation boxes “for the upkeep of the church” so a heathen such as myself wouldn’t feel hypocritical for contributing.

 

Each village has one or two big houses.  See earlier remarks about Cotswolds architecture.  Sometimes the big house is out there on display.  (I am wealthier than you are, nyah!)  Sometimes it is largely hidden behind aged but well maintained walls.  (I am so much wealthier than you are I have no need to flaunt it in obvious ways, double nyah!)

 

Each one has some number of scattered, smaller houses, most pretty and surrounded with extensive gardening.

 

A very friendly black Labrador has just wandered up and is demanding my attention.  I think I’ll pick this up in the morning.

 

Actually, I’m picking it up two evenings later, sue me, I’m on vacation. 

 

The Coln is a small, clear, fast flowing stream.  Everywhere I saw it, the bottom was scattered with long plants that danced back and forth in the rushing current.  It crosses through each village at some point, usually under a bridge so much larger than the river I suspect it either grows in times of heavy rain or used to.  The river valley itself is quite narrow, and in some cases a village has some or all of its buildings outside the valley proper.

 

With those basics, let’s take me back to having abandoned my car on the right hand side of the road in the right of way – I swear this is how people park in small villages here.  I pottered around Coln St Aldwyn for a few minutes, enjoying the pretty houses and so forth.  I briefly played peek-a-boo with a young child through the window of the old vicarage.  Once she lost interest or was carried away to safety, I walked down to the foot of the village and started to walk along the river towards Bibury.

 

I’ve already written elsewhere that I was getting unfairly fine weather.  This day was really going over the top.  At a little before 9 in the morning, the temperature was in the middle 60’s, there were only a few small puffy clouds drifting by, and there was a light breeze.  I was walking west, so the sun was behind me.  The whole walk unfolded as a series of vistas.  It just worked out that I would walk through a narrow spot that blocked the view forward but as soon as I stepped through that, I had a sweeping view all the way up to the next narrow spot.  If I’d been thinking, I’d have shot a photo at each new vista and had a fairly complete record of the walk.  I strongly recommend this particular stroll to anyone who has a shot at it, particularly if you can do it early on an unusually fine May morning during a year in which the flowering trees are giving it their all. 

 

It is about 2 miles through fields and a few small stretches of woods.  Sometimes I was close to the river.  Sometimes it would meander away to my right.  I spent nearly an hour since I did pause to soak up scenery and take quite a few pictures.  I only ran into a few other people, including a couple who I think own or occupy one of the properties I walked across.  I got a sense they were trying to look a little put out to have this odd American walking across their land (quite lawfully, I was on the footpath every setp), but were in such good moods they couldn’t quite put it across. 

 

At another point, I startled a couple of deer out of cover.  These weren’t the tiny little deer I’d seen in Europe before but full size, blue ridge mountain looking deer.  Neither had much in the way of antlers, so they were either does or youngsters.  They ran off quickly as soon as they heard me.

 

Enough enthusing, but I will say if I had to pick one short stretch to get across to someone why I’m over here and enjoying it so much this would be the walk to take.

 

At the end of it, I was in the village of Bibury – well established as the scenic capital of the whole valley.  First, it’s got a collection of cottages called Arlington Row that one of the big Arts and Crafts philosophers (too lazy at the moment to look up which one) deemed England’s finest contribution to esthetics.  Second, the great hall that was the manor house has turned into a hotel, so anyone can get access to it.  Actually, you can get access to it a little too easily.  I managed to wander into the private garden, intended for staying guests only, without knowing I’d done it.  I was embarrassed when I ran into a gardener (already on my way out) who told me this, but I can’t say I was disappointed to get a walk through.  Third, it sits in a broad part of the valley, so the whole place is more visually available to the visitor and almost everything takes advantage of access either to the river, to a mill race built somewhere deep in the past, or to a scenic trout hatchery with intricately landscaped grounds that sits on the northern edge of the village.

 

Next stop was Ablington.  This time I did do the photo of every vista trick, with good results.  The map was a little unclear as to whether one part of the path was really public or not, but I didn’t see any keep out signs, so I kept pressing forwards.  I met a woman who operated a kennel and stable business who was very reassuring and helpful, although she gave me the sense that I’d gotten onto some rarely used paths.  At one point, I had to dodge around a big water splash as she described it.  It was a field corner that used to just touch the river bank, but the cattle have wallowed so much at that corner that they dug a broad pool.  As I detoured around it, I once again exerted my strange fascination on the cows and wound up with a few dozen of them following me until the path turned a little uphill, and they decided that was too much work.

 

Shortly after that, I reached a spot where the track disappeared in the middle of a field.  I could tell from the map where it ought to be but saw no sign of any kind of path.  Because I was making this up as I went, I hadn’t programmed anything in the GPS, so it wasn’t as much help as it might have been.  I wound up swimming through hip deep weeds – many of them thistles – until I found a stile that took me over a fence and onto a very well defined path.  I think everybody who takes this route must do about what I did, but we don’t all flail around in exactly the same place, so the weeds just spring back up without leaving a good trace.

 

I popped out of some woods and crossed a little footbridge into the village of Winson.  It was very small, but very wealthy and horsey.  Coln Rogers and Coln St Dennis followed in rapid succession.  I don’t mean to short change them, but they were just more of the delightful same.  If you want details, you can borrow my 1967 Cotswolds book sometime, it remained accurate.

 

I stopped for lunch at the Fosse Bridge hotel.  The menu was unexpectedly California cuisine.  I had pasta in pesto with fresh mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes, all very tasty.  For some reason, they called the tomatoes “sun blushed” which, since tomatoes are already red, seemed silly to me.  Accompanied the meal with pints of two different ales I hadn’t encountered before, both good. 

 

I set out again, well contented if a little less steady on my feet.  My map showed two alternate ways onward to Chedworth, home to a celebrated Roman villa first excavated in the mid 19th century.  I chose one off the map but somehow got onto the other one.  It worked just as well, but I still can’t work out where I stepped wrong.  I had a long climb up something called Pancake Hill.  I know, it struck me as a contradiction in terms as well, but I couldn’t find anyone local to ask.  As I walked along, I kept trying to remember the name of that figure of speech.  I ruled out Onomatopoeia, Simile, Metaphor, and the one that sounds like a town in New York.  It crossed my mind that these had all been around the walls of my 7th grade reading class and that if I could just pop in their for a minute, I’d have my answer.  I merely spew all this onto the page to give you a sense of my ale modified thought processes while chugging up a hill with a silly name, however, I still can’t remember the name of that figure of speech.

 

The couple of miles on to the villa made a great sobering up period.  It’s turned out to be far from the best Roman site I’d visited.  Most of the décor of the villa was destroyed, but a lot of the systems like heating and plumbing largely survived.  My favorite thing about the place is that the National Trust has to be equally respectful of the ancient history of the place and of the recent history of its excavation.  Actually, the folks who dug it up didn’t do a bad job, even by modern archeological standards.  They didn’t keep the kind of records that would be ideal of exactly where they found things, but they did pay attention to little bits they were digging up.  Best of all, they for some reason convinced themselves, once they’d excavated the short base of the villa and one long wing, that there was no other wing, so they left a third of the building under the earth for some future expedition to dig up with methods that will surely be better than anything we have now.  I say that with confidence, since the sense I got was that the Trust won’t have any cash to dig there for at least another 50 years. 

 

The Trust staff were wonderful to me when I mentioned that I would appreciate some help finding a taxi service.  I’d walked 13.5 miles by this point in nearly 5 hours.  Even if I had the energy to retrace my steps, I was likely to run out of daylight.  The woman in charge heard my question and said this was exactly the sort of information she wanted her team to assemble to help visitors and set people off scouting through phone books.  Somebody found a company in Northleach, a nearby town that some sources even give as the address for the villa.  They wouldn’t even let me use my own phone to call.  I got the sense that someone else had been belittling the need for them to put together a fact book, and she was so excited about me as a piece of evidence for her case that she went into overdrive.  I bought a bottle of supposedly Roman inspired bubble bath in the shop, partly as a show of appreciation, and partly because I like lavender and chamomile bubble bath. 

 

Cab came.  In 25 minutes I was back to my car.  Drove back to the farm by way of Lechlade for a little provisioning stop as mentioned above.  Day well spent.

 

Garmin facts:  13.5 miles in 4:58 walking with 2:13 gawping, resting, and eating lunch.  Moving average 2.7 mph.  Overall 1.9.  409 meters climbed, many of them up Pancake Hill.