After my holiday in Devon and Cornwall during the summer of 2001, the next walking holiday that I took was in the middle of September. I remember that I had originally booked my holiday for a week or two earlier but due to a clash of holidays at work I was asked if I’d be move my holiday. Since I hadn’t booked any accommodation I agreed, which meant that I was on holiday the week commencing 10th September 2001. Events later in the week put me off doing much walking so this proved to be a rather short holiday. With Foot and Mouth still prevalent in my usual haunt of the Brecon Beacons I decided to go somewhere new, and somewhere that was not far away from where I live. I had travelled north, such as to the Peak District, many times in the past, but I had never gone south, for example, to the Cotswolds, which is a range of rolling hills, farmer's fields and picturesque villages. It may be a popular place with tourists but frankly I found the scenery a little dull.
It has been very hard to reconstruct this walk from my memory and from the small number of files on my computer that I’ve found archived away. None of the walks described seem to match my memory of the walk or the description of it in my diary. I remember that it was a walk in the northern part of the Cotswolds along the edge of the Cotswold Escarpment. My diary simply says “Monday I went to Chipping Campden and Broadway. I walked from Broadway Tower round Snowshill and Stanton. Nothing great.” From this I assume I started from Chipping Campden, and I do recall parking beside an old brick wall (all the villages in this area have very old houses). My best guess is that I was following a guide book that I’d found at the library, but the contents of the website walkingbritain.co.uk seems rather promising, though not perfect. Walk 1308 seems to be close to my memory of the walk but it doesn’t go through the villages of Snowshill and Stanton mentioned in my diary. It is entirely possible that I made up this walk from the map based on many sources and is now impossible to reconstruct.
On the assumption that I started in Chipping Campden, my first destination would have been Dover’s Hill, which is owned by the National Trust. This hill lies on the edge of the Cotswold Escarpment and must have far-reaching views to the west. Joining the Cotswold Way I walked along the Mile Drive all the way to Broadway Tower and the top of Broadway Hill, which is one of the highest points in Cotswolds at a dizzying 313 metres. If I did indeed go through the villages of Snowshill and Stanton then I must have found a way through or around Broadway Tower Country Park to the village of Snowshill (where I believe I had lunch). The sight of Stanway House on the map sparked something in my head so it’s possible I continued south-west from Snowshill as far as the village of Stanway and then ploughed on north through Stanton, unless I just took a direct route over Shenberrow Hill to Stanton. As you can tell this walk didn’t leave much of an impression on me, but I do remember my reaction to the village of Broadway which I eventually reached mid-afternoon: I couldn’t get out of the tourist-laden trap fast enough.
The broad high street was striking enough but was not really the sort of thing that interests me. These pretty villages in the Cotswolds are nice enough if you like that sort of thing but it wasn’t really my sort of thing, and after half a dozen of villages all with the same coloured stone buildings it starts to get a bit dull. From Broadway I still needed to get back to Chipping Campden, returning by way of Dover’s Hill, which I either visited twice or missed out at the beginning of the walk. This was not a great walk, but the next day would be much more memorable for completely different reasons.
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