The Cotswold Way: Leg One

Chipping Campden to Broadway (Strava says 6.82 miles)

Sunday 24th September, 10am. Moving time: 2 hrs 17 mins. Elevation gain: 665 ft. 14.844 steps.

The Cotswold Way is a 102 mile long National Trail starting from the Cotswold Market Town of Chipping Campden to the Roman City of Bath, it follows the Western Edge of the Cotswold Hills through rolling pastures, beech woodland and honey-coloured villages built from Cotswold stone. Nordic Nomads have decided to take on the challenge of walking it in 16 stages from North to South, tackling a stage once a month. We’ve opened it up to include family and friends who love to walk and fancy the challenge too!

In September five intrepid walkers, some with Nordic Walking poles and some without met at Broadway and drove to the start location in Chipping Campden, leaving some cars at the end point!

The weather was a bit miserable with sideways rain and mizzle across the hills, but we set off to find the start point near the Market Place in Chipping Campden. There’s a distance stone marker with “Cotswold Way The beginning and the end” -profound! Interestingly the distance marker is only 100 miles – not sure where we have lost 2 miles already!

The is a beautiful Way marker stone (made by artist Iain Cotton) on the ground by the Market Place. This marker stone was unveiled in 2014 and is made from limestone with a brass acorn in the centre (the National Trail symbol) it has a quotation from TS Eliot and place names from along the route. The TS Eliot quote is from the second poem of his Four Quartets “Now the light falls across the open field, leaving the deep lane shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon”

Selfie taken we follow the instructions from the guidebook and follow the various way markers past St Catherine’s Church and a house with a blue plaque telling us that author Graham Greene lived there for a couple of years. Passing pretty Cotswold stone houses, some with thatched rooves we then began a steady climb uphill on a track. The views across from the hill were shrouded in mist from the rain, so we continued to climb onto a short stretch of road, the path beyond the road was quite narrow and so single-file was necessary.

St Catherine’s Church, mist views and Graham Greene’s old house.

We reach a lovely wide kissing-gate (no rucksacks getting snagged or removed here!) and it opened onto a much wider flat grassy space. This is Dover’s Hill and according to the guidebook there are lovely views! We pause at the Trig point, look at the slightly disappointing view and continue along the wide grassy area to a viewpoint stone with a metal map atop it. Squeegeeing the water off with our hands it tells us what views we could be seeing. Birmingham is only 30 miles as the crow flies!

We go through the car park and continue on a path down towards a busy road, fortunately the trail crosses the road and then keeps us off-road parallel to it. The field is full of plants with pretty pink flowers and no-one knows what the crop is, the Plant Net App tells us it is Buckwheat!

We reach a lovely Cotswoldy stone stile which leads us into Martin’s Copse which was planted as a memorial to Reg Martin a past chairman of the Cotswolds Voluntary Wardens. Here we take a snack break in the shelter of the trees.

The trail now takes us onto The Mile Drive according to the OS Map. Here we pass several American walkers all apologising for “walking on the wrong side of the path” We chat to a couple of dog walkers as some of us shed our waterproof coats, regretting it a few minutes later when the weather takes a turn for the worse! The wind picks up and the rain lashes at us as we cross a more exposed area. The trail then takes us through some quite claggy looking fields, but we all decide we’ve walked through much stickier ones on other occasions.

We cross a road and then arrive at an area called Fish Hill, there are public conveniences and picnic benches here and we stop to take a comfort break.

Suitably relieved we continue on our way. The trail crosses a road and slightly goes back on itself and we find ourselves in a lovely area of woodland, this comes out onto Broadway Hill and we pass previously quarried areas and a Nuclear Bunker! The landscape here is very lumpy and green and it feels like we’re almost walking through a small valley. Suddenly Broadway Tower appears over the hillside looking majestic.

Broadway Tower is a Grade ll listed folly built in the 18th Century, during World War Two the Royal Observer Corps used its wide vantage point to track enemy aeroplanes. You can pay to climb the tower and visit the roof viewing platform, we didn’t!

The weather was beginning to clear and blue sky was spotted and we decided here was a good spot for some lunch and as luck would have it a viewpoint with benches appeared! We sat looking at the lovely view across down the hill to the village of Broadway (trying to work out which part was its famous wide High Street flanked by Cotswold stone buildings)

views from the tower, finally clearing up!

Our tiny amount of peace was shattered by a large family group with dogs and children who were also noisily enjoying the view. After some nourishment we set off to descend into the village of Broadway, down through the fields and past quite a lot of way markers (hard to get lost here) and soon we reached the upper end of Broadway High Street. There are some absolutely fascinating and stunning buildings in this village and a few gorgeous doors too!

Finally reaching the end point for today we stopped by the wooden sign post at the bottom of the High Street (for another selfie obvs) and then proceeded to wind our way amongst other visitors back up the other side of the High Street to return to our waiting cars. Post walk stretches completed some of us were returned to Chipping Campden to pick up our car. Despite the rain, we all enjoyed the first leg and are threatening to return next month for the next instalment (hoping for better weather!)

The Cotswold Way: Leg One

The Cotswold Way: Leg Two