Cotswold Way

Chipping Campden → Broadway

Distance: 6.18 miles
Ascent: 204 metres
Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes

The year's final trail
« Not walked | Not walked »

Our walking plans for 2017 included completing two more National Trails. We realised a while ago that was too ambitious, but today at least we can start on one of them. This short walk sets us up nicely to walk the rest of the Cotswold Way, hopefully early next year.

As has become the trend, the Cotswold Way starts at an elaborate modern marker: a stone disc set into the pavement beside the Market Hall, engraved with words from a previous resident of the town, T.S. Eliot:

Now the light falls across the open field leaving the deep lane shuttered with branches dark in the afternoon

Rather unloved next to it is the original marker, a much simpler affair stating "Bath 100m". I much prefer it.

Since we were cloaked in mist for the entirety of this short walk, we don't have much to report.

We've been here before anyway, on Jane's 40th birthday weekend. But even before then, in a way these hills have a story intertwined in mine. I remember Dad pulling over in the car when Jez and I were nine so he could point out Broadway Tower. Only much later did I discover that Mum and Dad spent their first night as a married couple in a hotel in the village. Through the mist and my faded memory I caught a glimpse of a story that began fifty years ago.