Cotswold Way

Birdlip → King's Stanley

Distance: 17.13 miles
Ascent: 730 metres
Duration: 6 hours 11 minutes

Like a rolling cheese
« Not walked | Not walked »

The beginning stages of today's walk took us through more deciduous woodland, in clearer weather than we'd had yesterday. A very pleasant wander along a gently-climbing woodland track eventually brought us out to the foot of Cooper's Hill, famous for the annual cheese-rolling race. It's much smaller, and steeper, than either of us imagined. Thankfully, rather than crawling straight up the face of the hill, the route zigzags around the back of the hill to gain the top of the escarpment. Standing at the top — with a cheese-roller's-eye-view of the slope — we could only imagine the bravado needed to attempt the chaotic run back down to the bottom. It wouldn't be pretty.

Much of today's walk was through quiet woodland, with wild arum, wood violets and ransoms already showing fresh green leaves. We'd seen gleaming white clumps of snowdrops amongst the remains of tumbled-down stone walls, too, so it was slightly ironic to watch a stream of traffic being marshalled into the grounds of Painswick House, which was advertising its own snowdrop display, presumably at a cost. We stopped in Painswick, a beautifully-preserved stone-built town, for a very welcome coffee.

Climbing once again to the chalk ridge, the best views of the day were at Haresfield Beacon, where the path takes a circuit of the Iron Age hill fort known as The Bulwarks. The Severn plain and the distant Black Mountains were visible from this airy promontory, making up for previous murky horizons, before we decended again to meet the canal and mill building on the edge of Stroud.