The Cotswolds

Savour the mellow charm of one of the world’s most beautiful manmade landscapes. A Walkopedia favourite, although we have to disclose bias on this one -other than our ratings, which are of course flintily objective!

En route you will wallow in everything that the Cotswolds are famous for: atop, green rolling hills, dry stone walls, fine stands of trees and wide views; deep, steep valleys containing ludicrously perfect villages nestled around an ancient church; grassland and the sheep that were the root of the hill-land’s prosperity for much of the way; sleepy golden farmsteads; marvellous market towns, castles, great houses and monastic and even Roman ruins; prehistoric hill forts and burial mounds; and, much of the way, the beauty of the curling escarpment, with its views across the Severn valley to the Malvern Hills and, afar, the Black Mountains.

Stay in market town hotels, village pubs or farmhouse B&Bs along the way.          

Multi-day walks:

The Cotswold Way winds for 102 miles along the western escarpment of Britain’s Cotswold hills, from the perfect market town of Chipping Campden to fabulous Roman and Georgian Bath in the south. While a walk along the whole route would be hugely rewarding, any section would make a wondrous day walk – and you can usually create a circular walk to get you back to your start point.

The Diamond Way: a delightful, roughly diamond-shaped, 60 mile, 5 day circuit which meanders through some of the northern Cotswolds’ finest landscapes. The Way is officially structured in 60 stages from Moreton-in-Marsh, which has good rail and bus connections

Great day walks:

The Cotswolds have a huge variety of great walks. You almost can’t go wrong choosing a footpath at random and heading off.

You can’t go wrong if you take some stages of one of the great long-distance walks, and devise a circuit from it.

Walkopedia favourites include:

-        the Chastleton Circuit, and

-        Blenheim Park (not strictly Cotswolds)

– pages to follow!

Various websites have a wide selection of Cotswold walks. Have a look at:

-        Walking Britain

-        Ramblers Association