Hiking the Cotswold Way

In September 2013 I traveled to England for a month's stay.  After validating my Britrail Pass at Heathrow airport I visited my friend Dot in Redhill and we spent 4 days exploring National Trust sites in Surrey, Sussex and Kent.  Then I took the train to Weymouth and explored Dorset for 5 days, doing some long hikes on the Dorset Coast Path.  Then I took the train to Moreton-in-Marsh and a bus to Chipping Camden, which was the start point for my 10-day, 105 mile hike on the Cotswold Way.  I successfully finished the hike in the lovely city of Bath.  From Bath I traveled to Chippenham where a friend and I did some more exploring of local sights.  Finally, I went by train to Great Malvern where I explored some of the places that have a link to Charles Darwin, who visited Malvern on several occasions.
  One of the first places I visited in the company of my friend Dorothy from Redhill was the mansion at Wakehurst and the mansion at Nymans in Sussex, where we toured the beautiful gardens.

 

 

   The next day we visited Polesden Lacey, another National Trust property.  The large house was once the home of Edwardian millionaires and socialite extraordinaire Margared Greville.  She hosted parties for the A-list of her time, including King Edward VII and the Aga Khan.

  We also visited Ightnam Mote and its 530 acre estate.  The house is a medieval timber-framed manor house surrounded by a moat.  The house was built in 1320.  In recent times it was sold to an American bachelor from Maine who visited the house each year.  When he died he gave the house to the National Trust. 

 

 

 

 

 

   We next visited Knole House, another National Trust property.  This "house" is one of the largest private houses in all of England.  The house has 7 courtyards, 52 staircases and chimneys, and 365 rooms.  The house was built in the 15th Century and was first owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and then by 6 successive archbishops.  Henry VIII liked the house and took it for his own.  At his death ownership passed to Queen Elizabeth I who didn't particularly want it.  She gave it to Thomas Sackville, the Earl of Dorset, who was her official treasurer, and it has been owned by the Sackville family ever since.

 

 

 

  Leaving my friend I used my Britrail pass to travel to the seaside town of Weymouth in Dorset, where I stayed for 5 days.  I used the opportunity to spend several days hiking on the Dorset Coast Path.  My longest trek which took an entire day involved hiking from Weymouth to White Nothe, with dramatic chalk cliffs, and then returning to Weymouth.  By the end of the hike my swollen and aching right ankle was loudly protesting. 

  

 

   Leaving Dorset I made my way to the lovely village of Chipping Camden, the start point for the Cotswold Way.  Chipping Camden lies at the most northern point of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  Chipping Camden, as is true for many of the villages in the Cotswolds, prospered because of the wool industry in the 14th and 15th centuries.  The Cotswold limestone that was used to construct the homes and buildings is highly influential in defining the landscape.  As one heads south from Chipping Camden the color of the stone gradually fades.  In Chipping Camden and Stanton the stone is of a lovely golden color, but further south in the village of Painswick the limestone is of a pale ivory color.  In hiking the Cotswold Way there are certain images that recur again and again:  lovely towns and villages of limestone construction, pastoral natural landscapes little affected by the passage of time, homes with intricately trimmed hedges, cottages with thatched roofs, and lovely dry stone walls that help define and beautify the surrounding landscape. 

 

   One of the first structures one sees along Chipping Camden's main street is the Market Hall, built in 1627, where sheep merchants once sold and traded their wool.  Many of the private homes in the town have thatched roofs.

 

 

 

 

     The next village encountered on the hike is Broadway, named for its wide central street.  During the height of tourist season it is congested with tour buses and is one of the most photographed villages in all of England.  I saw no tour buses as I walked through the village -- one of the reasons I like to travel off-season -- and stopped at a shop to buy some locally-grown apples.

 

 

   After leaving Broadway the trail leads past Broadway Tower perched atop a hill and visible for miles in every direction.  Broadway Tower, completed in 1799, is the highest little castle in the Cotswolds and the second-highest point along the Cotswold Way.  Note the section of dry stone wall in the foreground of the photo.

 

 

   The first day of the hike ended in the village of Stanton, in my view the prettiest of all the villages in the Cotswolds.  Every building, composed of warm yellow limestone, was picture-perfect, with trimmed hedges and blooming flowers.  In front of one of the houses was a post with a sundial.  Katherine Parr, the 6th and last wife of Henry VIII, owned a manor house in Stanton, and is buried in Sudeley Castle, several miles away.

 

 

 

 

  The natural landscape of the Cotswolds is one of rolling hills and occasional high escarpments.  The towns and villages are located in the valleys.  On the hillsides are farms and pastures with grazing cows and sheep, or lovely beech-tree woodlands.  As a consequence, there is quite a bit of up-and-down hiking as one traverses pastures and fields to walk down to the villages, and then walks back up on the pastured or wooded hills to continue hiking along the path.  Below are a few photos to illustrate the beauty of the natural landscape and some of the farms, pastures, fields, and woodlands I encountered during my hike.  Along the trail there are Iron-Age hill forts and burial mounds (called barrows).  These barrows, such as the one shown in the photo, are grass-covered mounds with an opening at one end that could be blocked by rocks.  Inside these barrows archaeologists have found human skeletons, animal remains, flints, and pottery.

  

 

 

 

 

 

  Another Cotswold village that impressed me was Painswick, which I reached at the end of Day 5 of my hike.  Painswick is an old village dating back to the Domesday Book.  The off-white colored limestone of the buildings, many built by wool merchants during 18th Century, is noticeably lighter that the golden-hued stone of Chipping Camden and Stanton to the north.  The dominant building in town is St. Mary's Church built in the 14th Century; in the graveyard are 99 sculpted yew trees, some over 200 years old.

  

 

 

  Leaving Stanton, I continued hiking for 5 more days and finally finished the hike in the beautiful city of Bath.  Bath is a city that dates to Roman times and is one of only four cities in Europe that has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage City.  Because of natural hot springs the Romans built large bath complexes here.  Now, people with money to spend, come to the modern baths of Bath to be massaged, perfumed and pampered.  Dominating the city is Bath Abbey, one of the most beautiful churches in England. On either side of the massive doors of the abbey are statues of St. Peter and St. Paul.  Nearby is Pulteney Bridge and the River Avon.

  

 

 

 

   Leaving Bath I traveled to the nearby city of Chippenham to spend several days at the home of my friend Clive.  On one of our sight-seeing trips we visited the little village of Avebury, with its attractive pub, shops, and houses.  Nearby is the famous Avebury Stone Circle, a world heritage site.  The vast stone circle, with huge and impressive stones, was built between 2000-3000 BC and is the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world. 

 

 

 

    On another day we visited Berkeley Castle.  The castle has a fascinating history.  Finished in 1154, it is the second oldest continuously occupied building in the United Kingdom [Windsor Castle is 1st].  King Edward II was imprisoned and eventually murdered here in 1327.  During the English Civil War the castle changed hands between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians five times.  In 1645 the castle was attacked by Parliamentarian troops under the command of Oliver Cromwell.  One member of the Berkeley family moved to America and the Univ. of California at Berkeley was named in his honor in recognition of his efforts to help fund educational institutions.  In touring the castle, one is impressed by the grandeur of the rooms, including the small Dining Room pictured.

  

 

 

 

  Before leaving England for home, I decided to visit the town of Great Malvern at the foot of the Malvern Hills.  I took a train from Chippenham to Oxford, then at Oxford station took the train to Great Malvern.  I always try to visit a place that has some significance to Charles Darwin each time I visit England.  It was to Great Malvern that Darwin travelled to visit Dr. Gully at his Hydrotherapy Institute and to take the "water cure".  Darwin suffered from a variety of health problems and he believed, as did many other people at that time, that hydrotherapy treatments would help.  On several occasions Darwin travelled to Malvern -- a two-day trip during Darwin's day -- to visit Dr. Gully at his Institute. There, Darwin and Dr. Gully's other patients, were awaked early and wrapped in cold wet sheets from 6-7 am, after which they hiked up to St. Anne's Well to drink the "healing" spring water.  Darwin's last visit to Malvern was one of great turmoil and sadness.  His favorite daughter Anne, then 10-years old, was slowing succumbing to the ravages of tuberculosis.  He and Anne traveled to Malvern and stayed for over a month, in the hope that Dr. Gully could cure her illness.  When Anne died she was buried in the graveyard of the impressive Great Malvern Priory, founded in 1085, and the location of the largest collection of medieval tiles in all of England.  When Darwin left Malvern for the last time, his spirit was broken and any vestige of faith in a benevolent God that remained in his heart had disappeared. 
  Below are photos of the Great Malvern Priory, the grave of Anne Darwin, the medieval gatehouse of the priory (now a museum) and St. Anne's Well.