Today was almost all on The Cotswold Way. We walked along together a bit more than a mile to the hamlet of Hailes, with a 12th century churchlet, where we parted company for Jay to go directly to Wood Stanway (1 mile) and me to take a 3-sided route there (3 miles). I thought he might have to wait for me for an hour and a bit, but a few things got in my way. Just after the church are the ruins of Hailes Abbey, which was destroyed in "the Dissolution" (when Henry VIII confiscated and often destroyed all the Catholic church property). It wasn't open yet, but I was waylaid by the guide/caretaker who was setting up. When he offered me a private tour, who was I to turn it down? This was a Cistercian Abbey. The Cistercians were famous for their skills at corralling water, so the abbey has very complex water canals, cisterns and the like. As I said, it is now ruins (I was so enthralled I forgot to take pictures, but here is one from the web):
There are two kings and a queen buried here (I thought I knew which ones, but apparently wikipedia disagrees with my guide/my memory, so I'm not sure any more). The church of the abbey was a duplicate of Westminster Abbey (which is unusual, since the Cistercians were supposed to be into simplicity).
This took up 30 minutes of my time (but was well worth it). I started up a lovely tree lined path, built by the Cistercians), heading in the direction of Beckbury Camp, which was an ancient hill fort, and also the highest point of the day. The last part the climb was almost a scramble, but luckily almost all of the uphill was in shade (while most of the rest of the day was in sunshine -- the high was 85F). Once I got past Beckbury (about a mile from where I left Jay), there was a long flat section and then downhill. Here is another round of gorgeous views.
View from near Beckbury. Notice the double line of trees on the lower right side of the picture
These are the above mentioned trees, up closer. The row goes on for almost 2 miles, and we crossed it several times. No idea what it represents.
Just another gorgeous view:
Random village church. I think this was Stanton, where we had to cross through both the old and new graveyards as part of our path
Yet another lovely hamlet
These marker stones were common as driveway markers. They look like mushrooms.
Coming into Broadway
A nice house in Broadway
My getting back to Jay (who ended up sitting under a tree with the couple we shared the B&B with that night) was delayed by another adventure. As I was about to enter a field, a pair of women came through the gate, one with her hand covered with tissues. She told me to be careful as she had been kicked by one of the horses. (How do you get kicked in the hand by a horse?) The horses were waiting right beside the gate I was headed for, so I waited about 5 minutes for them to move. They, of course, headed directly for me, hanging around the gate I was at (I suspect looking for a treat). I finally started banging my hiking pole on the metal gate and that eventually shooed them away, off to a corner where there was shade. I walked through the field without incident. In the next field, I met walkers who told me in the next (third) field there were some "aggressive horses", so perhaps they were the kicking ones, but I was never in that field. Overall this cost me about 20 minutes.
Shortly after that, I went through a field that had a sign warning of a bull, but he and his cows had enough sense to stay on the other side, where it was shady. I also went through several fields with sheep that day. In addition, lots of people walk their dogs on these paths, we saw innumerable pheasants and a few raptors of unknown species. Very animal filled day.
After meeting up again with Jay (with much texting to locate each other exactly), we had lunch at a (the) pub in Stanton, where I had a "salmon pate" starter, which a) was nothing like a pate. It was about 3 slices of each of three kinds of smoked salmon -- hot smoked, cold smoked, and gravlax, with bread, pickles etc. -- and b) was way too large to be a starter. It was my entire lunch, but I couldn't finish it. All three kinds of salmon were extremely tasty.
Broadway was pretty touristy (I would recommend trying to visit on a weekday), but not as much as I expected, probably due to the heat. We stayed in "Dove Cottage", a little B&B on the edge of town with only 2 rooms. It had been originally a dovecote, and you could still see some of the holes for the doves to enter (covered up on the outside) in the living room. It had a typical English garden. The downstairs was amazingly cool, given the heat of the day, but the upstairs, where the bedrooms were, was pretty warm. Still, it had tons of Cotswold charm.
Our dinner that night was in the most upscale looking of all our restaurants (but still in the middle price range), and sadly, was our only mediocre food experience the entire trip. Oh well, can't win them all.
The next morning we took a hired car back to Heathrow (the cars were, by our calculation, only about 20% more expensive than the train, and much more convenient, especially since the trains didn't run on Sunday morning).
Our trip was with Cotswold Walks, who were terrific. They were able to arrange this at the last minute (the other company I called couldn't make it work), gave us this incredibly detailed booklet of directions for each day which was waiting in our room, rented us hiking poles, were available 7 days a week by email (and presumably phone, but we didn't have to put that to the test), made the luggage transfers work seamlessly and were just overall nice people. We met a couple of other groups who were hiking with them also. Also, ours was a semi custom tour -- they had a 2 day option, and 4 or more day options, but we wanted 3 days and they made that work. Not all their walks are 15 miles/day -- we met people who were doing the same paths (more or less) as we were, but were walking 8 or 9 miles a day. So I would highly recommend them
The accommodations were "quaint" (made more so by the heat wave -- the only air conditioned building we were ever in was a toy store. It's just not needed in this area). For example, the floor in Dove Cottage was slanted, and I felt like I was falling out of bed all night But that's part of the charm. The breakfasts were uniformly good, with often homemade jam (and definitely made to order eggs and meat). The dinner restaurants were recommended by Cotswold Walks, though you can find their menus on the internet, and even the last one wasn't bad, just not as good as the others.
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