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| From Cotswold Way … |
Last weekend some friends and I got together for some serious walking along the Cotswold Way. It was a reunion of university friends who first met in 1975 and who have kept in touch ever since. That makes us quite old now, which means that I think we can rightly be proud that a) we have stuck together all this time, and b) we managed a 22 kilometre walk without dying or even needing medical assistance.
Dave had organised the whole thing. I drove down to Ilmington on the Friday and spent the evening with Dave and his partner Liz. That was when Dave broke it to me that his black labrador Ella would be sleeping in our shared hotel room the following night!
We drove to the rendezvous at the Seven Springs pub where the A436 and A435 intersect south of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Already there were Michèle and her husband Rob (the only one not of the original ’75ers), Dick and his wife Sue, and Kate. Rob handed out some Herbalife protein bars with dodgy ‘use by’ dates, and we set off. All of us, that is except Michèle who has chronic back pain. She had volunteered to ferry all our luggage to the destination hotel in Painswick.
The weather was dry and cool, but unlike the previous day it was overcast. Our route took us to Charlton Kings Common, but the views from the escarpment towards Cheltenham were hazy. We moved on to Leckhampton Hill where we saw the ‘Devil’s Chimney’ which rises up from the disused quarry down below. This mysterious stone stack is nowadays protected from climbers.
We trudged on for several hours and, as our little group spread out, it was good to be able to ‘mingle’ – you could chat with someone and then move to the next one or two by either speeding up or dropping back slightly. Ella was having great fun exploring with us and I imagine her little excursions meant she walked double the distance we did.
I had my heart monitor on and according to that, most of the time we were doing healthy cardiovascular exercise. I felt fine, if a little apprehensive that something would give out before the end of the day.
The next landmark was the Air Balloon pub. It’s quaint-sounding but it sits on a nasty, busy roundabout where the A417 meets the A436. After a few hours traversing traffic-free countryside it was a shock to the system and I couldn’t imagine wanting to sit at one of the many picnic tables laid out in rows in the rather exposed beer garden.
We’d all been to the same pub many years ago one December. (We used to hire a cottage in a different place each year and meet up to celebrate New Year. That year it had been in Birdlip.) We were about ready for lunch by this time, but Dave had scheduled a stop further on – which served to underline how much walking we still had left to do.
So we pressed on along Barrow Wake, and on until we reached the Royal George Hotel in Birdlip. It was one of those comfortable but corporate sort of bars and we immediately divided into two camps. One chose to sit in the beer garden whilst Dick, Sue Rob and Michèle (who was waiting for us) preferred the bar where the England v Australia rugby match was being shown. It took a while to get served with lunch by which time the cool outside temperature was beginning to make it less than pleasant to sit outside. I refilled my water bottle and we all set off – Dick particularly reluctant to leave the crucial match!
Rob had appointed himself Man of the Map – he even had a waterproof map thingy – but we managed to do a complete circle back to the pub! This was where the group dynamics became interesting. Rob declared that someone should go into the pub and ask directions as they were all bound to know the Cotswold Way. However, he had a sore hip so it should be someone else. Nobody bought that, and in fact nobody was prepared to take any more direction from Rob so he went back in. The others forged off, confident that they knew which way was right. I hung around outside for Rob, who emerged some time later with no more information!
At this point, he decided to pull out of the rest of the walk because of his hip pain, perhaps brought on by some strenuous over-exertion the preceding week in preparation for the walk. So he phoned Michèle (who by this time had driven off back towards Painswick) to pick him up. I soon caught up with the others and the five of us (plus Ella) walked on. We wondered whether Rob’s withdrawal was entirely for the reason he gave, or was he feeling bad for having led us all in a circle?
On and on we walked. It seemed an endless task adjusting the number of clothing layers to wear as we warmed up and cooled down. Sometimes a woolly hat was needed; within half an hour we were down to t-shirts. All the time I was conscious of the need to keep hydrated, particularly as I usually get headaches doing sustained exercise.
At last we came upon the Haven Tea Rooms, Coopers Hill. What does that name conjure up in your mind? A quaint Edwardian café with waitresses in starched uniforms? Think more an old lady’s bungalow with a table underneath a corrugated plastic lean-to. She’s well used to walkers and is ready with her scrap books containing press cuttings describing the ‘world famous’ cheese rolling – a local annual tradition. As we waited for her kettle to boil we looked out over the somewhat overgrown garden and orchard to Witcombe Reservoir in the distance.
We added our comments to her visitors book, drank tea and wrote a card to give to Rob later. We declined her offer of cakes as we were still digesting our rather late lunch, and soon it was time to press on. Rob phoned to tell us that England had beaten the Aussies against all expectations which made Dick’s day. We passed the foot of the hill where they do the cheese rolling. There are signs at the bottom telling you not cause erosion by clambering up it so we followed the path round and walked a very steep path to the top, where there is a tall maypole with a cockerel on the top. There we stopped to wheeze and look down the very steep incline where each year at Whit, limbs are broken and people are carted off in ambulances in the name of tradition.
Now we were on the last section of our walk. We had to keep up the pace as Painswick was still a long way off and we needed to get there before nightfall. We were in quite dense woodland and there was talk of torches. If it had got dark, finding our way out would have been almost impossible, I reckon.
Eventually, we emerged from the woods onto Painswick golf course where we could see the remains of an Iron Age hill fort. We got to the Falcon Hotel at dusk, and rested our weary limbs and showered before gathering in Dick and Sue’s room for gin and tonics before dinner. It was all too reminiscent of occasions spent in student rooms over a quarter of a century ago.
The Falcon is opposite Painswick’s beautiful Norman church and some of us had a walk round its graveyard where there are around a hundred meticulously clipped yew trees. Dinner was pricey but good, served by very friendly and attentive eastern European staff. We ran out of steam fairly early on after dinner and so it was time for bed. Ella settled down quite happily on her mat and I for one slept like a log!
At breakfast we were joined by more old friends from university, Lilla, Celia, Ruth and her husband Roger. Dick and Sue said their goodbyes so they could get back home to their 14 year old daughter. Lilla and Celia both brought their dogs and so after settling the bill we set off on another walk around Painswick. The views bere beautiful and the weather perfectly bright and clear. I preferred the landscape to that of the Cotswold Way the previous day.
Returning to Painswick we sat in the rear yard of the Royal Oak pub with all three dogs. Several others had brought theirs too, but the landlord’s cat was unfazed by all of them and remained on top of one of the tables, snoozing in the autumn sun. We were all snoozing by the time our food arrived – the staff seemed overwhelmed and were finding it difficult to cope.
Back at the Falcon we took a look at the ‘world’s oldest bowling green’ at the rear before going our separate ways.
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