Our second walk of the weekend made me realise what a breeze these previous walks had actually been. I know it may not have seemed like it at the time but after the most recent exploits I do. The walk on Easter Monday involving Joyce and Jane has made me realise that this is not all plain sailing. Today was tough and really very unpleasant. Maybe that’s a good wake up call for the last walk of the quarter- just when things seemed to be going so well. There is still a long way to go.
I’d decided that this was a good opportunity to do the next stage of the Cotswold Way. We’d set off from roughly where Pete and I left off up near Belas Knap. We’d park at the Wardens car park and simply wander onto Cleeve Common and have a little mill about. This could be done as a nice round walk so no need for two cars which was good news. I’d done a lot of planning trying to check the route both on the OS maps and on WalkJogRun. The mileage did keep coming out at approx 7 miles not matter what I did but I reassured myself, and Jane, that if we’d had enough at any point, we could simply cut back across the common and head back. It seemed ideal.
Joyce arrived early and off we set. The first disappointment was that the weather was truly awful today. I know I’ve said it was cold and windy on other days but this was something else. It was cold in Broadway but of course we were heading for the highest part of the Cotswold Way…oh my goodness the winds up there were hideous. We drove along a lane to get there that still had quite a bit of snow on it and as we walked, we were dodging around patches of really deep snow where it had drifted. The walk starts and ends in the fields but most of it is a case of walking across the common land. This is nice and grassy and so not particularly muddy, which was the only good thing about this walk.
As soon as we got on the common I was became rather disorientated by the size of it and the numerous paths -none of which seemed to be marked. Recently they have diverted the Cotswold Way up here and we were supposed to be following the old route which, according to the guidebook, would be marked with white posts with black tops. Nowhere to be seen. After a while we lost the main path we seemed to have been following- it just sort of ran out in all the gorse. Now I didn’t know where we were. I could see what appeared to the ‘edge’ we were looking for – where we’d get the magnificent views all the way to Shropshire- but I couldn’t be sure and it looked a bloomin’ long way away. Jane got out her compass on her mobile and I was quite proud of the fact that I instinctively knew where north was. Joyce, however, claimed that my arm had wandered as Jane said where it was. Not true.
It was at this point that I uttered the immortal words ‘I am completely lost, I have no idea where we are, I don’t know where the path is.’ Later on I realised that this was a bit of a mistake in terms of instilling confidence in my fellow walkers.
Joyce decided to take things into her own hands and strode off in an upwards direction. I agreed with this as perhaps if we could get up higher we could get a bit of perspective. I shouted out jokingly ‘Ooh look we’re going off piste.’ To which Jane replied ‘Piste off, more like’
Oh dear things were not going well and we hadn’t even reached ‘the edge’ yet. However, the good news was that we did find ourselves on a rather more substantial path heading across the common in the direction of ‘the edge’. This looked more like it, there were even other people on it. However, just as things started to look up, the path got icy and as I said to Jane ‘Be careful’ she slipped and fell right down on her back. Luckily she didn’t put her hand out to stop her fall as otherwise she could really have hurt herself. It was treacherous and we’d had a lucky escape.
Jane soldiered on and we soon found ourselves amongst the golfers teeing off at the Cleeve Cloud golf club. Mad loons. We walked straight through this lot and sure enough did find ourselves at ‘the edge’. Sadly, today there were no magnificent views and we could hardly see through the wind induced tears anyway. On another day, in glorious sunshine, I am sure it would be lovely up here but just not today. We were supposed to walk all the way along the edge but again I really wasn’t quite sure where we were. I asked a man at one point whether the building I could see just down below was the Rising Sun pub. He seemed to think that it was hysterical to tell me that we were miles away from there. Apparently my face was a picture. In fact, that was the pub and as this was only about the halfway point I gave Joyce and Jane a get out clause. They could stop here and I’d carry on and go and get the car. They both agreed to carry on although Jane in particular was clearly not happy about this.
We met a lady,with some small dogs (lucky not to get blown off ‘the edge’), who took our photo up by the highest tree in the Cotswolds. She was antipodean and probably famous as she had big sunglasses on. Or maybe she just came up here regularly and knew the problems with the wind?
By now we were just yomping in a straight line towards the telegraph masts that stand tall up here. Again there were huge piles of snow and looking back towards where we’d walked, it was very bleak indeed.
At the masts we took to the road which was also very icy and about a mile down here we found the turn off back through the fields. I don’t know what was wrong with me today but again I found all the paths very confusing. Eventually we were very relieved to be back at the car and a chance to escape the wind and warm up with piece of Joyce’s banana loaf which I’d carried all the way round. In total we had walked about 7 miles today and it was all a bit too much for all of us. We drove to the nearest pub in Brockhampton and started to thaw out over some twiglets, pork scratchings and Otter ale.
Once again lessons have been learned from this experience. Jane gave me a test on this a couple of days later when she could bear to speak to me again……
I have also been out and bought Jane her very own lucky Leki stick for the future. You never know though- maybe Spring really will come soon. Please.
Walky Talky 