More cars than sheep today. Out of the Cheltenham trailhead we went steeply up, eventually past a heritage tree, 600 years old, a beech. Spoke with an older birding couple. Heritage Beech, Meg & Jan for scale Whiskey Hill We pressed on over Whiskey Hill, the high point, and down along a field planted with what Bruce guessed might be barley. Came up to the Cotswolds Diner just at 12:00, and thought we’d get paninis to go. They ran out of the bread. We pressed on again, up over Leckhampton Hill, passing an Iron Age hill fort, and a quarry feature called devil’s chimney. The whole hillside is a local common recreation area. On the way down we passed a golf course and a glamping place. At the trailhead we saw a sign for Star Bistro. We found it, and got in before they switched from lunch to light bites. It is part of “National Star College, an independent further education college and special school for people aged 16 to 25 with learning difficulties and physica...
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Shenberrow Hill, Stanton to Prestbury Hill, near Cheltenham Sounds hilly, right? Right. To Stanway and Wood Stanway, not so much, so the first couple miles were easy walking in cool overcast weather. The Way meanders through pastures full of sheep, and sheep dung, with regular passage through gates or over stiles. Today I began taking pictures of the different types. By the way, getting images into blogger using the phone is frustrating to the point of being impossible. I had been writing expecting to put them in, but I’m giving up (Note on 9/10/18: I am home, and retired, and taking time to add some photos) . Anyway, the Way goes out of a village, up a hill, down off the hill to another village, then repeat. The morning was about seven miles total, and included our first field with cattle, rather than sheep. One steer did not want to move from our direct path, and did not like us using it. We took a wide detour around him. Later another batch of steer...
Chipping Campden to Stanton Beautiful full moon around 7:00 in Chipping Campden. After eating a decent breakfast & connecting with the luggage transfer guy, we set out. 100 steps up the lane, I had to run back to leave the room key on the bar. We climbed Dover Hill, initially up a lane, then a gradually deteriorating path, eventually just a worn streak in the field. Dover Hill is the site of the Cotswold Olimpick Games. Here’s some of Wikipedia‘s description: “The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports now held on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday near Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England. The Games probably began in 1612, and have continued on and off to the present day. “ Since 1966 the Games have been held each year on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday. Events have included the tug of war, gymkhana, shin-kicking, dwile flonking, motorcycle scrambling, judo, piano smashing, and morris dancing.” I had to know wh...
Set out from our hotel for St. James’s & the tube. Jan & Bruce we’re just leaving theirs as we hit their corner. They had discovered it was a haunt of MI 5 & 6, Ian Fleming drank there & Churchill too. It was actually in a Bond film. Easy trip to Marylebone station, pronounced MAR-LEE-BONE, we learned. Nice train ride to Leamington Spa. Surprise transfer to a bus for the trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. Shoutout to the Doubletree for storing our bags. Half mile walk to Shottery and Anne Hathaway’s cottage. Beautiful gardens. Her family lived there for almost 400 years. When he courted her it was only three rooms with about ten people living there & no chimney in the kitchen. We found a nice path from Shottery to Stratford-upon-Avon, visited Trinity church, but didn’t pay to see his grave. Walked along the river to the Foot Ferry. I asked to turn the handle & got more than I bargained for. The operator mocked my incompetence by ...
I slept about half an hour on the plane, I think. Then it was passport control, baggage claim, into the Underground, Oyster cards, on the tube, and I’m staring out the window at rooftops and chimney pots that make me expect Dick Van Dyke singing chim chim cheree. We’re out on the street at Victoria Station, getting lost twice finding our little side street hotel. It’s 8:00 AM. Way too early for checking in. But they hold our bags and we head out into London without a plan or a sense of direction or anywhere near enough coffee. There’s decorative guards in boxes, so I gave Meg a little bit of AA Milne: “They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace/Christopher Robin went down with Alice...” There’s real guards with machine guns and bullet proof vests, too. We went through St. James Park, to Trafalgar Square, down to the Embankment, into the Temple, around by Covent Garden, back to Trafalgar area to the National Portrait Gallery. The rain got serious. We were using the gal...
Stuff, like waking up worrying about the time change adjustment, worrying about finding coffee-- enough of it, worrying about remembering the passport, the pounds, the itinerary. More stuff, like worrying about being able to keep the blog using my phone. So right now, I am testing writing a blog post by dictating to the phone. I wanted to test adding pictures too. So far, it isn't working. I stumbled on this on Atlas Obscura, and found it is 3/4 mile from our path. Looks like fun: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/snowshill-manor-and-garden?awc=3795_1535077191_67667b65cc8834220859c83097a75822&campid=Affiliates_Central_Mem_AWIN_Standard&aff=78888 I put Chrome on the iPhone in hopes blogger would work better on Chrome. Here’s my new daypack, loaded as a carryon for tomorrow’s flights: It’s leaning against the rest of my stuff.
Useful Links Besides the books I referred to in the previous post, we looked at several websites while planning our trip. Here's a list, in case you want to plan your own or learn more than I tell these next three weeks, or in case I want to find one again. These are sites useful for planning or viewing the trail and region as a whole: This is the official national trails site, I remember finding it very informative in the early stages of planning. https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/cotswold-way This one is nice because it includes user reviews and photos of all kinds of stuff along the way. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g186281-d187766-Reviews-Cotswold_Way-Cotswolds_England.html I don't know if this one got a facelift since back in the winter, but it now has Google Earth street views of several parts of the Way, which are really cool. https://www.cotswoldsaonb.org.uk/visiting-and-exploring/walking/cotswold-way-national-trail/ This is a page on the...
It's getting close now. Last night Meg and I discussed how much money we should convert into pounds (£ and I just spent five minutes learning how to type it on a mac keyboard, but I won't be using the mac when we go to England, so I'll need it on the iPhone later). We also talked inconclusively about whether to advance buy hop-on hop-off tour tickets for the day we arrive, the day after or the day we return to London after the walk. In April, when we first got the London guidebook, we thought we knew. Or we thought it was so far away we didn't need to know. But now it's getting close. I'm planning to document the vacation and the walk with posts here, but I thought I ought to write at least one pre-travel post. We must have started talking with Jan and Bruce about walking the Cotswold way nearly a year ago. A year before that, they walked the Camino de Santiago. They'd invited us, but when you work as a teacher you can't take a week or two off in...