It was coming to the end of the summer heat wave when my walking companion and poet Peter Gibbs and I set out on the North Cotswold Diamond Way.
This as its name suggests is a sixty-mile diamond-shaped walk around the beautiful and rolling North Cotswolds countryside devised by Elizabeth Bell a member of the North Cotswold Ramblers Association.
It starts and finishes in the iconic honey-stoned town of Moreton-in-Marsh, where we stayed overnight at the comfortable Manor House Hotel before setting out.
This lovely rural walk encompasses other famous Cotswold towns including Chipping Campden and Bourton-on-the-Water.
Our first day’s trek took us north through the quiet, far from the madding crowd villages of Aston Magna, Paxford and towards Mickleton Hill Farm, where there are some grassy hillocks comprising the soil from the digging of a railway tunnel.
It was here that occurred the last reading of the Riot Act following a pitched battle between Brunel’s navies and a gang of contractors.
Now heading south, we came upon the village of Ebrington and lunched in the lovely old Ebrington Arms.
From there we made our cross-country way to Chipping Campden where we could not resist calling in for a traditional cream tea before continuing to Broad Campden and on to journey’s end in Blockley.
This fabulous old village was featured in the much-loved series Father Brown, where it doubles for the fictional village of Kembleford and is truly a hidden gem tucked away in the rolling north Cotswolds.
It was also bricks made here, which were used in the building of Battersea Power Station and its later restoration.
We walked down into Blockley around teatime and were immediately impressed by its cluster of buildings around the centuries-old church of St Peter and St Paul and its narrow, terraced streets with upper-level walkways and flowering shrubs outside most doors.
We stayed overnight at The Crown and set out the following morning for our next destination around the Diamond Way some eleven miles ahead at the strangely named village of Guiting Power.
Guiting it appears is an Anglo-Saxon name meaning rushing, referring to the nearby River Windrush while Power comes from the Anglicised family name of Le Pour, who were Norman Lords of the Manor back in the 13th century.
But Tuesday morning’s walk got off to something of a false start when we were instructed to walk along the road from the pub and take a right turn up the lane by a red pillar box, which we did only to find it was the wrong lane and having retraced our footsteps then discovered that the one we wanted plus another red letter box, not pillar box, was a further one hundred yards further on.
Having now climbed out of the village onto much higher ground, we spent the morning crossing some delightful countryside complete with rolling grasslands and wooded hills and valleys to eventually descend to the small hamlet of Hinchwick.
Here we decided to leave the meandering trail and spend the afternoon making for journey’s end along a more direct series of quiet country lanes, still affording many lovely rural views.
Our overnight was spent at the comfortable Guiting Guest House with dinner in the welcoming Hollow Bottom pub.
We donned full waterproofs the following morning, because the skies had turned an ominous grey and the weather wet and windy and just past the village church we were confronted by a giant freshly ploughed field with our gate diagonally across on the far side.
There was, of course, now no alternative but to divert right around it and it’s at times like these that precious time is lost.
I had marked our way ahead on our OS map with a series of diamonds leading us south through the villages of Naunton and Notgrove to journey’s end at The Wheatsheaf thirteen miles ahead in Northleach.
I had also noted several country lane options in case the weather became really nasty and we had lost time and felt like shortening the walk.
It was a morning for meeting American tourists, firstly a couple in our guest house followed out on the trail by a foursome on a walking tour, with whom we stopped for a chat and a photo call.
They were Julie Thimpdeau and Trish Leslie from Durango, Colorado, Mel Ripp from Door County, Wisconsin, and Michelle Bonebrake from Logan, Utah.
The heavens opened as we entered the picturesque hamlet of Notgrove and we ate our sandwiches sheltering under a belt of trees before deciding to shorten the walk.
Later the weather cleared, and we walked on along quiet country lanes across a flatter landscape of vast golden stubbled crop fields under giant skies.
We trudged into Northleach around 5pm to stay at The Wheatsheaf and discover another little Cotswold gem nestled in the surrounding countryside.
A glance at our OS map the following morning now showed the way heading out on a southerly course before swinging around to reach the village of Farmington ahead and to the north.
So, it now seemed sensible to follow a quiet lane direct to Farmington where we discovered that the good folk of Farmington, Colorado, had paid for the re-roofing of the village ancient water pump some three-hundred-and-fifty years earlier.
The Diamond Way now led forward some eight miles to reach the tourist honeypot of Bourton-on-the-Water.
Here we came across artist Brooke Anderson sitting quietly by the water amid the tourist throng sketching a view to take back as a special memory to her home in faraway Seattle.
We stayed overnight at The Old Manse Hotel before completing the final stage of our cross- country journey back to Moreton-in-Marsh.
En-route we rested for a while on a seat in the quiet churchyard in the sleepy hamlet of Evenlode.
But we had only been there a few minutes when a small working party of bell-ringers turned up to inspect the restored church tower to see if a new sixth bell could be installed.
It’s small serendipity moments like this and our random chance meetings along the way that enhance all our cross-country walks.
At one point out on the trail we emerged from a long woodland drive to be confronted by what appeared to be a locked field gate overlooking rolling open country and duly climbed over it.
Five minutes later as we made our way along a track, up came a local landowner called James on his quad bike towing a small trailer, who stopped to give us a well-deserved ticking off!
He had been watching us through binoculars and had noted that we had both climbed over his gate and not on the far sturdier hinge side!
It was a good-humoured rebuke, and we parted company with him pointing out the way ahead.
It was on hearing a discreet peep in a narrow lane the previous morning that I turned to find Carlos Rodoreda of Paella Catering in his car waiting patiently to pass by.
I stepped hurriedly aside, and we engaged in a merry banter. He was in his way to join his partner, Helen, at their kitchen, who was busy preparing all the ingredients for their Spanish tapas and Catalan cuisine for both private and corporate events.
“Now I shall be chop, chop, chopping all day long, but I could give you a lift if you like,” he said. Needless to say I politely declined his kind offer.
Here are Peter’s poems describing sights and scenes along the way
Evenlode Church
A sunlit Cotswold churchyard
Filled with leaning stones
Time-erased the carved names
Of those in village known
The funerals it has witnessed
The weddings here once held
The stories and the characters
That centuries have weld
The bells last rung in Seventies
Now due for restoration
One to mark a jubilee
With love from grateful nation
The vicars preaching sermons
To lead the parish flock
A seat for walkers resting
Where they can world take stock.
Transatlantic Travellers
Walking ‘cross the Cotswolds
Upon the Diamond Way
You wouldn’t think that you would meet
Folks born in the USA
From Utah and Wisconsin
Plus Colorado girls
Travelling Transatlantic
To give our sights a whirl
They told us of their journeys
And places that they’d been
I read them several poems
Evoking rural scenes
Our lives have here crossed briefly
We’ll then go separate way
But we will have fond memories
Of these September days.
Tea & Cake in Bourton
Tea and cake in Bourton
Sitting by the stream
Lunch a recent memory
So No to scones and cream
A pink teapot that’s pouring
The cup that’s there to cheer
And Jules behind the counter
When customers appear
We’re watching all the tourists
And children feeding birds
Such perfect autumn afternoon
That one is lost for words.
Golden Stone
Close by a lonely railway bridge
A house stands all alone
Glowing in the sunlight
Its walls of golden stone
Beyond a slumb’ring hamlet
Where green woodpecker calls
Hidden in the woodland
As autumn leaves quiet fall
Clouds blown in from westwards
Bring the short, sharp showers
A pause amidst the sunshine
Of soft September hours.
Winding lanes show vistas
Of valleys set below
Within the rolling Cotswolds
Where life remains still slow
Cotswold Scene
Sitting on a shaded bench
Enjoying Cotswold scene
Trees on far horizon
And patchwork fields between
Clouds across a sky of blue
Just like a flock of sheep
Scudding pushed by fresh’ning breeze
Across the hillsides steep
A lane leads down to Bourton
Where waits the tourist throng
But out here in the country
There’s just sweet nature’s song.
