The Cotswold Way- Day 1, 2, & 3: Home to Mikleton, to Broadway, to Hailes

First three days on the cotswold way, the first two spending the nights at home. These writings are thoughts typed on the go, I haven’t put pictures up yet or edited really, just had a quick spellcheck.

Day 1 Home to Mikleton

I set out on the cotswold way from home, alone, carrying my yellow bag, though empty of stuff. The wind is warm though the sky is grey and blows the hedgerows heavy with summer growth.

The whole day was grey and overcast but I felt warm. The walk was not of particular interest - lots of wheat fields nearing ripeness, passing through unwelcoming farms. I first felt in ‘the cotswolds’ at lower Quinton church - a lovely building of yellow stone. I ate my lunch under a tree in the church yard, the green by the pub was busy with people out for the first day of post lockdown pub opening.

Day 2 Mikleton to broadway

the sun is out and Mikleton looks lovely. I walk into fields growing with a blue flower I do et recognise, some sort of crop. My tummy hurts a little. I go onto a side path through the woods above Mikleton. I walk through firms taller than my head.

i sing nonsense ramblingly. I’m joyous with feeling and happy with dreaming And realing the meaning of life. The sky is So bright and its all so right with the bird call and buzzing of life. The trees are a glistening and I’m out listening to songs of the summering type. Oh joy for July, I resented it why, for the beauty out ways all that pain. Everything’s green and the floral scents keen as a sparrow hawk chasing down prey. Spring in our Steps, they’ll be dancing yet, and the sun will set warm on this day. summer come wiTh out regret , summer comeby slowly. I loved the spring with passion first but now it’s summer for me.

I’m walking on the monarchs way over the hills. Everything is grown to full and a salad field is full of pickers. I’m so happy to be here. I’m so happy to say that I’m here at last I’m here at last I’m here in my way.

Swallows flit and dip over the wheat fields as I head toward chipping Camden. The air is heating up. I go past , what I presume by the shape of the bins to be, Camden school and manage to drop a metal latch on both my thumbs which causes a lot of pain . I go by the beautiful church, beside which are some grand gates, these apparently are the ruined entrance to Camden house which survived only thirty years before it was burnt down in the civil war, from the side of the the church yard a small part of the building remains with magnificent spiked chimneys. It must have been spectacular, the loss makes me sad.

All this glorious yellow stone. I have arrived in cotswold country.

I ate lunch on Dover hill where the view suddenly broke out over the glouster plane. I paced 1000 double steps on ‘mile drive’. They took me nearly right to the end of it, which surprised me- 1.5to 1.75km. 1100 took me right to the end. I find an unsuspectedly beautiful area in ‘fish hill’ picnic area between the main round where mum FaceTimes me- they’re cutting the battenberg cake at Grannie Sue’s birthday party - I am sorry to miss it. Then I pass on to broadway tower, there are a lot of people up there so I move on and in one of the meadows on the slope down to broadway I stop and sit, finish my thermos of tea and put in my headphones (i listened all yesterday but have walked in silence - and song - today ). I sat a while watching the clouds rolling over the Gloucester plane. There is quite a dark haze over the far hills, it looks grimer than it feels. Though sun breaks out from time to time to warm me. The earth is dry and warm. The plane is split with fields, towns, warehouses, poly tunnels. This down there is an urban human landscape. The cotswolds cuts the plane with its hills, scarp and slope crisply delinighted. The wind is strong, gusts shivering the short cut grass and chills me a little. Small patches of sun dot the plane, dissolving away into flat shadow and reappearing on another field. Lying down I start to see the cloud mass moving, as in in shutter clicks it flows slowly. I rest for half an hour or so there on the meadow, then follow down to Broadway where they are clapping the 5oclock nhs clap. mum picks me up.

Day 3 broadway to hailes

Mum drops me off in broadway with my now ginormous bag. I have a days of walking and camping ahead of me. I’m very nervous, wish I didn’t have to leave the car. But I did, waterproof on for the chill and set off to start the seven day haul. It’s overcast. Up the hill behind broadway I stopped to eat cherries from the trees with views from broadway to the tower pitched on the hill. They’re sour but plump . It seems farther away than I thought- little by little one travels far.

Butterflies break off from the long grasses and scatter in front of my face. buzzing in the undergrowth. Birds twit solitarily. Grumbling traffic from down on the plane. The air smells damp, like oncoming rain though I don’t think I’ll expect any, a touch of rotting plants. The thistles are tall and sprout clouds of light purple heads. The weight of my bag slows my progress uphill.

Broadway coppice is a thin wood of ash. it is nice to hear the birds. Over the hill, where the skyline rolls in folds , and dry valleys dip away, there is a glider twisting slowly on a distant hill. I think gliders are beautiful; it glints wite against the grey patterned clouds, silently and slowly dancing. I wish I could dance like that.

A tuft of rain blows in the wind.

Walking into a line of beeches, I decide once and for all my old judgment on these trees was wrong. Now I know why they are the queen of trees. Magnificat, clearing the ground around them, yet social. Silver bark and teaming multitudes of dipping leaves. Rustling whispers of old tales. Teaming roots. Twisted branches. Back yesterday I passed the beech trees on the ridge above Mikleton where a Belgian soldier hospitalised by ww1 carved portraits. Someone’s etched in the bark ‘down with the kaiser’. And he did. Tree carvings are funny things. Stretched by time until they are so stretched the return back, forming a new layer of bark, and the information is lost to history. I saw 1805 or something like in the bark of a tree in Charlcote park. Someone standing there with their penknife 200 years ago, but it’s recent history to the beech. About to step out from under the beeches’ branches there is a sudden deposit of rain . Under here no rain reaches. It will sink down into the limestone and emerge 100m below in a spring in buckland in many years time . The rain stops quickly. I go on, in a path worn deep into the grass around, down to the limestone rock. The white path rises and the ridge narrows. I love the way the short grass dips and folds over old quarry sites. I feel like I am very high up, the views sweep down then ripple out across the cotswolds to far hills. Pale stone walks cut the gentle landscape. There are so many butterflies up here. I feel privilidged to see them all here.

I have lunch in the dry dally beneath the site of a Iron Age hill fort on Shenberrow hill. I thought the clouds were breaking up but it remains overcast. The trail then passes through Stanton which is a supremely beautiful cotswold village, though silent and unwelcoming -broadway is welcoming but not silent! I pick an apple from a tree, but it’s too sour too eat, leaves my mouth with that same funny taste of when we dared each other to eat sloes. A long stretch that heads through Stanway park with beautiful views out to the west and with more fields of that unfamiliar blue flower in crop. I shelter from a I little drizzle on the root of an oak. out to Th e west, where the sun shines on a dip in the hills a steeple rises, mirrored by steeples of cypress trees. It must be the church of new town or toddington. I wonder why this beech is purple.

Through Stanway where There is a wonderful rickety looking thatched cricket pavilion pitched on staddle stones. Th e village is quite, even more unchanged than Stanton. The guide book describes it having an air of feudalism. Old village cricket grounds. Water mill tithe barns and grand manor house with a scattering of estate buildings. surrounded by orchard meadows. Even the kissing gate and fence work seems ancient. There is an avenue of trees that ran broad through the centre of Stanway park, wonderfully it continues,, in preserving the same line through the fields, through wood Stanton and up the hill. I wonder why they went to such an effort. There is a very steep climb out of wood Stanley. Half way up I turn around by a marker post. The view! ‘Glory be to god for dappled things’ The light dapples over the west. Hills rise from the plane and fall back. Fields and hedges crisscrossing. It fades into blue on the far horizon. Out there a huge volume of dust or smoke has kicked up into the air in two places. I wonder what the cause is. My heart is racing as I plonk onto the memorial bench at the top of the hill. Such a view would rewarded a climb ten times the length. Round the hill along a drive track and there coming along the ridge, high high up , I meet again the avenue of trees I saw well over two km away ( and 100m below) in stanway park! How far does it stetch I wonder? It could go on and on. The boundary of bechberry Iron Age hill fort is clear. Apparently Thomas Cromwell stood here watching the dismantling of hailes abbey. Among the engravings on the beech trees I see a 1912. The nettles release beautiful scents as the sun comes out. A pretty bridleway, over arched with trees, leads down hailed fruit farm- my campsite. I am supposed how many people are staying there. A lady in a tent welcomes me. I pitch up, shower, cook my food. I’m unwell after dinner but later sit in my sleeping bag liner listening to the birds, content. Surprised ,I feel very tired.