Unwind / England
The Cotswolds at Walking Pace
Cotswolds · 6 min read
The Cotswolds are best experienced on foot, between villages, rather than by car in them. The famous ones fill with coaches by eleven; the footpaths between them are almost always empty.
England's right of way network makes this one of the simplest walking holidays anywhere.
Walk between villages
The Cotswold Way runs a hundred and two miles along the escarpment from Chipping Campden to Bath, and it can be walked in a week or dipped into for a weekend.
Shorter and quieter: the Windrush valley from Bourton to the Slaughters and Naunton, or the string of villages between Chipping Campden, Broadway and Snowshill.
The quieter half
The northern Cotswolds get the visitors. The south and west, around Painswick, Uley, Bisley and the Coln valley, have the same architecture and a fraction of the traffic.
Stow, Bourton and Bibury are lovely at eight in the morning and difficult at midday. Plan accordingly.
Pubs with rooms
The correct accommodation here is a village inn with six rooms, a fire and a kitchen that takes itself moderately seriously. Book dinner when you book the room.
Many will move your bags to the next inn for a small fee, which turns a linear walk into a very civilised week.
The case for doing nothing
Twelve miles a day, a bath and a decent dinner is a formula that is very hard to improve on.
Take proper boots. The mud is genuinely serious after rain.
