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Cotswolds

My England diary: favorite things

Posted on May 11, 2019

Just back from two weeks in England, half in the Cotswolds and half in London. In the former, there were some disheartening changes to one of our favorite pubs in a neighboring village. The old snug bar has been dismantled, its fireplace-facing easy chairs displaced by a pack of dining tables that lend this fifteenth-century pub all the charm of a high street Pizza Express. Still, I wish anybody willing to take on a country pub well. If it was easy, they wouldn’t change hands and shape so often.

Stroud

My disappointment was allayed when I was introduced to a pub, The Golden Fleece, in Stroud that seems to be getting everything right in balancing old and new. We only had time for a half pint, but I look forward to going back and whiling away an entire afternoon there, as our neighbor seemed to be doing with a pint and a paperback.

Instead, we cycled down the canal to check out the relatively newly renovated Stroud Brewer y. It’s wildly different than the original, much larger and slicker, and our hearts initially dropped with the sense that another gem had been lost. Then we found a spot in a snug overlooking the vast beer-hall-style ground floor and, over the course of a few hours and a few pints of Alederflower Pale Ale, had a lovely time chatting with our fellow patrons. Vélo Bakery and Pizza is still onsite in the brewery and provided our excellent dinner.

London

In London, our standout meal was a lunch at the Persian restaurant, Berenjak, in Soho. We sat at the counter and watched the team of cooks work the tiny open kitchen, delivering dish after exquisite dish from the clay tanoor over, grill, shawarma spit, and fryer. We chose conservatively but were still rewarded: hummus with taftoon (sourdough seeded flatbread from the tanoor), an aubergine stew, and a fancy riff on a late night kabab, piled on a bed of fries and topped with a hand-tossed lettuce and onion salad, all washed down with a house lager and a Bibble pale ale.

After lunch, we walked over to Second Shelf Books, the jewel box of a bookstore selling first editions of books by women writers. There’s a profile of it here, and it’s a must-visit if you love book stores. I bought a first-edition of Carson McCullers Clock Without Hands after ogling a much more expensive copy of Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado. Like Berenjak, I’ll be back.

Carson McCullers Clock Without Hands — The spoils of my visit to The Second Shelf: A first-edition Carson McCullers

Cotswolds Walking

What’s in a name?

Posted on September 9, 2017

Dry-stone-wall porn

I will be the first to admit I have a habit of propagating the concept of Twee Cotswoldia. My version of this part of rural England is all idyll and no ills. I have anthropomorphized every tree and animal within a ten-mile radius of our cottage to within an inch of its non-human life. You can always tell when I’m here because my tweets turn into a feed of hardcore dry-stone-wall porn.

This narrative of the countryside suits me—an outsider who comes here to relax—but of course I know this is a curated concept of these hills. I was reminded of this truth last weekend at the local wine bar when, for some reason, the origin of the name “Helen’s Ditch” came up. I had known it for the decade we’ve been coming here as the way everyone refers to a footpath that runs across the top of a field on the southern edge of town. I always thought someone named Helen owned the land behind it or loved walking there and therefore became its namesake, but it turns out Helen’s Ditch is called that because it’s where her body was found sometime in the 1980s. I wondered if someone was pulling my urban-rube-of-a-leg, but the story was corroborated by one of the more sensible patrons of the wine bar. There is no happy ending here. Nobody knew, or at least remembered, who killed Helen, and her legacy was the most prosaic of landscape features.

Today I went out alone on a walk and was halfway along Helen’s Ditch when I remembered the story. I wasn’t scared as much as morose: somehow Helen’s Ditch seemed a fitting metaphor for the current hurricane season with its combination of benign names of elderly people and deadly consequences. My parents, who live in South Florida, had thus far refused to evacuate ahead of Irma, and I was feeling more furious at them than scared for them. I made it to the end of the ditch path and headed down a dead-end road I had never explored—one of the boons of the Cotswolds is its never-ending supply of new forks in the road. At the end was a gate into a field and the ever-welcome badge-on-a-post indicating it was a public path.

I walked through long grass that soaked my feet through my running shoes, while nettles scraped my ankles. I walked alongside a pond and turned right before turning around to take the route that would lead me into a wood where I would startle a fawn and watch it pogo away. Soon I was at a large pheasant pen, a sort of ginormous chicken coop with tunnel-like entrances fashioned out of chicken wire and metal grates every twenty feet or so. A dozen of these skittish birds had made their way into an adjoining field and were lined up along the fence like they were waiting to face a firing squad, which, sooner or later they would (pheasant season here opens October 1st).

From here there was no way to get into the hamlet I had been aiming for, and so I walked back down the hill around the pen, slipping in mud and scattering pheasants as I went. I fashioned a path through a copse to avoid another particularly treacherous patch of nettles, emerging in a farmyard off a road at the far end of the hamlet. I was happy and out of breath and had forgotten about the world and its ills for an hour, reminding me my narrative of the countryside isn’t so naïve after all.

Cotswolds Walking

Thames Trek

Posted on August 28, 2016

Emboldened by the success of our hike in May on the Cotswold Way, husband and I set out on another of Britain’s National Trails, the Thames Path, last weekend. We only had two days this time, so we stuck to the twenty-three plus mile stretch of the path that’s in the Cotswolds. It runs from the Thames Head near Kemble to Lechlade, with Cricklade perfectly positioned midway for an overnight stop.

The Thames Head Inn on the Tetbury Road (A433) seemed like a reasonable enough guess at where we should be dropped off to start the walk. The pub has a huge framed map with directions to the trailhead in its doorway, but I walked right past them without noticing and asked a waiter for directions. He showed me back to the doorway without batting an eyelid, apparently used to this kind of behavior from walkers. Luckily the Thames Path is so clearly signposted it requires negligible navigational skills. In less than fifteen minutes we had found the start of the path, marked by an old ash tree, a pile of rocks, an illegible monument stone, and a very legible finger post declaring that the Thames Barrier London was a mere 184 miles away.

It was 11:00AM by the time we set out, having waited out the morning in the hope of letting the worst of the day’s rain pass. There was more rain—and little sign of a river save an overgrown riverbed—on the first two miles of our journey, but that just made the Wild Duck in the village of Ewen all the more welcoming when we arrived bang on time for lunch. We ate and drank better than we deserved for the distance we had walked, but the food was so good that I recommend a late morning start on the Thames Path regardless of the weather.

Back on the trail the waterway gradually became a stream before widening out to something recognizable as a river running between the lakes collectively known as the Cotswold Water Park. The name is a bit misleading; while there are leisure activities like boats and fishing, there are no water slides or wave pools. Of the 150 lakes in the area, only three are open for swimming. We stuck to dry land, walking on through the architecturally diverse village of Ashton Keynes, then back by the lakes of the Cleveland Lakes Nature Reserve, along an old railway track, and finally the ancient North Meadow of the Cricklade National Nature Reserve. It was 6:00PM by the time we arrived at the Red Lion Inn in Cricklade, our quarters for the evening.

Cricklade’s High Street, described almost 200 years earlier as a “villainous hole”

Conveniently, the Red Lion has its own microbrewery on site, Hop Kettle Brewing Company, and we sipped hyper local IPAs in the beer garden as we eased off our boots. Our spacious room was on the ground floor of a converted outbuilding adjacent to the garden, its only downside being a temporary plumbing problem that meant no cold water. After cooling down the bathtub with buckets of ice, we headed to the pub’s restaurant, hidden behind the main bar through a small side room. The gastropub menu included beer pairings for everything on offer, and, even though it was the restaurant’s recommendation, I felt awkward ordering a canned American IPA to accompany my excellent sole, peas, and homemade gnocchi. If you’re beginning to think this walk was just an elaborate excuse for gluttony, well, you’d be right.

Fortified by a locally sourced full English breakfast the next morning, we set off early in an attempt to miss the gales promised by the weather forecast (they never arrived). The path continues for a couple blocks along Cricklade’s High Street, past a plaque that points out the town’s less than illustrious past. In 1821, the journalist William Cobbett called Cricklade a “villainous hole” in his book, Rural Rides, noting that “…certainly a more rascally place I have never set my eyes on.” We left Cricklade by following the Thames under the A419, where the only sign of rascals was some graffiti under the overpass. Even that, though, had a gentle Cotswoldian slant: “Make tacos not war” it implored, complete with an illustration of a taco adorned with some frilly-edged lettuce.

Once under the motorway the path continued for a couple hours through gentle farmland, crossing the river at various points over wooden pedestrian bridges. There’s another Red Lion in the village of Castle Eaton, this one stuck in an early 1980s time warp complete with David Essex’s Silver Dream Machine playing in the background. The pub’s placement on the Thames Path is perfectly timed for a lunch stop, but even we were too full to eat. Instead we took liquid refreshment, connected to the achingly slow WiFi, and bantered with the genial landlady about her collection of tunes, which also featured Status Quo.

Leaving the village we walked through more farmland. Harvest was done and Swiss rolls of straw dotted the fields. After a few more pleasant miles, the path left the river and we spent an unfortunate mile along a busy road, the A361. This most unpleasant part of the journey was partially redeemed by the reward of a tiny thirteenth century church, St. John the Baptist, that greeted us in Inglesham just as we rejoined the path. William Morris, whose country house was in nearby Kelmscott, oversaw the church’s restoration in the 1800s, and it was well worth looking in before we continued on the last mile along the river to Lechlade.

The Halfpenny Bridge in Lechlade marked the end of our endeavor, just a mile or so short of a reclining statue of Old Father Thames at St. John’s Lock. We will have to wait to meet him and the rest of the Thames Country Path, which ends at Hampton Court, until spring. Instead we headed to the churchyard of St. Lawrence in the center of town that inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley to write his poem Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade—on a day, I imagine from the first stanza, that had been much like this.

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray,
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

The Thames between Cricklade and Castle Eaton

The Details:
The Wild Duck Inn
Drakes Island
Ewen, Cirencester
Gloucestershire
GL7 6BY
+44 1285 770310

The Red Lion
74 High St
Cricklade, Swindon
SN6 6DD
+44 1793 750776

Cotswolds

Running Away to the Circus

Posted on July 24, 2016

One of the pleasures of living abroad is being in a time zone that’s inhospitable to watching live television coverage of key events in America’s presidential election cycle. Having missed the circus that was the Republican National Convention, I made up for it yesterday by spending the afternoon under the not-so-big top of a real circus, one with clowns and acrobats and animals whose sole aim was to do the exact opposite of what appeared to be the objective of America’s Grand Old Party: to make people smile.

Giffords Circus is a summer institution in the Cotswolds, touring village greens and commons with its distinctly throwback-style of entertainment. This year’s show, The Painted Wagon, is a wild-west themed extravaganza—a metaphor all too fitting for behavior last week at the RNC in Cleveland. Dodge City Saloon proprietress Sarsaparilla Sal was our hostess for the afternoon, while the house band led by Handsome Eddie provided the musical accompaniment for a variety show that included a lassoing cowgirl, juggling barkeeps, and gasp-inducing aerial hoop dancing. Tweedy the Clown and his pet iron, Keith, were also on hand to keep the laughs coming. There was even a baddie sheriff who tried to arrest the whole audience for eating gold chocolate coins that had been robbed from Wells Fargo by El Gifford. Perhaps in Cleveland he could have been deployed to arrest an effigy of Hillary. It’s as if the Giffords—the circus is the brainchild of Nell and Toti Gifford—anticipated the political climate in America and built the perfect antidote of an afternoon. Now if only they would consider touring it in the states.

The General and his do-si-do-ing horse

Looking at my blog posts from the last year, it occurs to me that my afternoon at the circus fits a theme of how I like to spend my free time these days. From Kelmscott Manor to the whimsical Welsh village of Portmeirion to the London Tweed Run, I’m most interested in those activities who have no higher aim than happiness. I’m drawn to the creators of the world who’ve embraced this, from William Morris to Welsh architect Clough Williams-Ellis. A look over the headlines for the past month explains my newfound affinity for pursuits unburdened by any objective other than delight. More than ever, we need the Giffords of the world. An afternoon at the circus deserves a permanent spot on the curriculum for being human, especially if you’re running for president.

Books Cotswolds Walking

Laurie Lee and me and the Cotswold Way

Posted on June 19, 2016

For evening entertainment while walking the Cotswold Way, I packed a slim paperback of Laurie Lee’s Cotswold memoir, Cider with Rosie. The book has a firm place in the twentieth-century British literary canon although it remains somewhat unknown in America—at least it did to me before I lived in the Cotswolds. Capturing Lee’s boyhood and an age of lost rural innocence between World War I and the mid-1930s, I can’t think of an obvious American comparison. Little House on the Prairie crossed my mind, but its era (late 19th century) and prose style are different, and the Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy is its more obvious British soulmate.

In any case, Cider with Rosie had been resident on my bookshelf for the past few years—I must have bought it in the publicity surrounding the 2014 centenary of Lee’s birth—but I had never gotten around to reading it. Ten days of immersion in the countryside Lee was so fond of seemed like the perfect excuse to finally crack it open.

On the second night of our journey we stayed near Winchcombe with friends. We were still more than 20 miles north of Lee’s home territory in the Stroud Valleys, but Cider with Rosie would prove itself an eerily relevant literary companion that evening. One half of the couple who were hosting us is a shepherd and earlier he had brought 30 sheep into the garden to address the problem of a broken lawn mower. While we dined on a supper of takeout curry, I looked up from the table to see the flock gathered ominously at the kitchen window, their collective glare seemingly indicating their disapproval of the lamb rogan josh that lay steaming on the table (this menu selection, I note, was the shepherd’s idea). I tried to put them out of my mind as I dipped into the chicken tikka masala, but later, reading the local ghost stories Lee recounts early in the book, it seemed they were destined to haunt my dreams.

There is little remarkable about a two-headed sheep, except that this one was old and talked English. It lived alone among the Catswood Larches, and was only visible during flashes of lightning. It could sing harmoniously in a double voice and cross-question itself for hours; many travelers had heard it while passing that wood, but few, naturally enough, had seen it. Should a thunderstorm ever have confronted you with it, and had you had the presence of mind to inquire, it would have told you the date and nature of your death—at least so people said.

The next morning I awoke with a start to the 5am wake-up call of the bleating flock, one final act of revenge.

The lawnmower brigade before the lamb rogan josh incident

Three days of walking later we arrived in Painswick, the closest point on the Cotswold Way to the village where Lee was raised, Slad. Here there were signs to nearby Bulls Cross, but on the advice of Lee, we gave it a miss: At this no man’s crossing, in the days of foot-pads and horses, travellers would meet in suspicion, or lie in wait to do violence on each other, to rob or rape or murder.

In Painswick, Lee’s legacy started to be audible. Sitting in a coffee shop, I overheard a lively local whose father, also a poet like Lee, had apparently known the author and found him a tad arrogant. Our hostess for the next evening had aunts and uncles who had been classmates of Lee at the village school on which he lavishes an entire chapter, a taste of which is here:

Our village school was poor and crowded, but in the end I relished it. It had a lively reek of steaming life: boys’ boots, girls’ hair, stoves and sweat, blue ink, white chalk, and shavings. We learnt nothing abstract or tenuous there—just simple patterns of facts and letters, portable tricks of calculation, no more than was needed to measure a shed, write out a bill, read a swine-disease warning.

From our B&B in Middleyard, we arranged a taxi to take us up to the Woolpack Inn, Laurie Lee’s local pub. The bar is adorned with some pictures of Lee, but the real thing to see is the view from the deck overlooking the Slad Valley. We lingered on the patio while I caught up on my reading before sitting down at a table inside for dinner. Despite its fame from its association with Lee, the Woolpack remains a down-to-earth and lively local, with good real ales and a kitchen punching above its weight.

That evening I was introduced to my favorite chapter of the book, Grannies in the Wainscot, in which Laurie Lee marks himself out as the Alan Bennett of the south of England. The chapter is devoted to the two old ladies who lived in the “top-stroke” of the T-shaped house that Lee grew up in.

Grannie Trill and Granny Wallon were rival ancients and lived on each other’s nerves, and their perpetual enmity was like mice in the walls and absorbed so much of my early days. With their sickle-bent bodies, pale pink eyes, and wild wisps of hedgerow hair they looked to me the very images of witches and they were also much alike. In their time as such close neighbours they never exchanged a word. They communicated instead by means of boots and brooms—jumping on floors and knocking on ceilings. They referred to each other as “Er-Down-Under” and “Er-Up-Atop, the Varmint”; for each to the other was an airy nothing, a local habitation not fit to be named.

In the days of walking that followed we left Lee’s patch of England for Wotton-under-Edge and Tormarton, but the scenery remained as beautiful as Lee’s prose, like this description of his beloved mother, a voracious gardener:

While Mother went creeping around the wilderness, pausing to tap some odd bloom on the head, as indulgent, gracious, amiable and inquisitive as a queen at an orphanage.

On our second-to-last day of the walk we crossed the M4, a major motorway and milestone on the Cotswold Way. While technically still within the boundaries of the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, this part of the Cotswold Way begins to feel foreign for those who hail from north of the border. Both soil color and accents change. At our bed and breakfast in the unfortunately named hamlet of Nimlet, our hostess was particularly disinterested, making it all too easy for us to label this unfamiliar territory as unfriendly. The impression was not helped by the price gouging of a local taxi firm who charged us £25 for a 3-mile journey from the nearest pub, where we had been served a dinner seemingly fashioned out of cement.

Cider with Rosie once again echoed our journey. In the chapter called Outings and Festivals, Lee writes about an Annual Slad Choir Outing to Weston-super-Mare, a 50-mile journey in five charabancs that felt as foreign as going abroad. Their impulses as they entered “stranger’s country” were similar to our own:

So we settled down, and opened our sandwiches, and began to criticize the farming we passed through. The flatness of the Severn Valley now seemed dull after our swooping hills, the salmon-red sandstone of the Clifton Gorges too florid compared with our chalk. Everything began to appear strange and comic, we hooted at the shapes of the hayricks, laughed at the pitiful condition of the cattle…

Once arriving in Weston, members of Lee’s entourage also had gripes about the refreshments: Mrs. Jones was complaining about Weston tea: ‘It’s made from the drains, I reckon.’

The Cotswold Way finishes at the grand doors to Bath Abbey, and Lee also writes about church, albeit an altogether humbler affair, in the final chapter of Cider with Rosie. His lament for the loss of community life seems as poignant today as it must have been when the book was first published in 1959.

This morning service was also something else. It was a return to the Ark of all our species in the face of the ever-threatening flood. We are free of that need now and when the flood does come shall drown proud and alone, no doubt. As it was, the lion knelt down with the lamb, the dove perched on the neck of the hawk, sheep nuzzled wolf, we drew warmth from each other and knew ourselves beasts of one kingdom…

To end here would be to give the wrong impression of walking the Cotswold Way with the companionship of Lee, which was a joy. Rather I’ll leave you with this gem of a line from Lee’s description of his boyhood summers, my own memories of the summer of 2016 juicily fossilized with Lee’s prose and the paths of the Cotswold Way:

We carried cut hay from the heart of the rick, packed tight as tobacco flake, with grass and wild flowers juicily fossilized within—a whole summer embalmed in our arms.

Cotswolds Walking

Where to sleep, eat, and drink on the Cotswold Way: The best of life off the trail

Posted on June 11, 2016

It’s been a little more than a week since we arrived in Bath, shattered but giddy over completing the Cotswold Way. Two days later I was stricken—and I do mean all the grandiosity and fervor that word implies—with a nasty stomach flu and, between that and going back to work, haven’t had time to write much about the experience. Spoiler alert: it was awesome.

While I assimilate all 102 miles of the Way and try to figure out how I’m going to get it down in words (I’ve got your pictures here), I thought I’d pass along some of the more prosaic but nonetheless important details now: the best places we slept, ate, and drank along the walk. Because nature aside, the beautiful thing about the Cotswold Way is your never far away from a bed, a pint, and a pie.

Best B&Bs
The Cotswold Way is more B&B than tent, although there are a few fields in which to erect one if you insist. Personally, I prefer a room with freestanding tub, like the one that greeted us at the end of our first day at Shenberrow Hill in Stanton. Wifi is dodgy in the whole village in the early evening, but this was the only shortcoming of an otherwise perfect stay hosted by a British Joan Didion lookalike and her Jack Russell puppy. Five-star full English breakfast.

Just south of Stroud in Middleyard we stayed at Valley Views, a bungalow B&B owned by the genial Pam. She not only came out into the street to track us down when we somehow veered off the path, she also booked us a taxi to nearby Slad to eat dinner at the legendary Woolpack pub (more on this later). Pam’s accommodation was sparkling clean, with decent wifi and a bath thoughtfully stocked with a variety of bubble and foam potions to soak our weary legs. Five-star full English breakfast.

In Tormarton, just north of the M4, yet another proprietor had to come into a field to find us and lead us back to their B&B, in this case The Little Smithy. Our digs were an entire elegant little cottage, complete with sitting room, kitchen, and, yes, a bathroom with a tub. There’s no wifi, but the accommodation was so comfortable we almost didn’t mind. Three-star full English breakfast, but only because it was doll-house sized. (Having eaten eight consecutive full English breakfasts prior to this one, my arteries thank the hostess for the portion size.)

All these B&Bs are part of the hosts’ home, not a hotel trying to be cute with its name. Mercifully all are directly on the Cotswold Way so, assuming you have a better sense of direction than us, there’s no extra foot mileage involved. All cost under £90 for two.

Best Pubs
After a few days of hiking, it became clear that wild garlic (ramsons) was going to be the official scent of the journey. Covering every woodland floor, these delicate white flowers conspired to keep food on my mind for much of the walk. While others may have been admiring the scenery, I spent most of my time thinking about how I could really go for a nice risotto. Luckily there were excellent pubs en route to keep my thirst and hunger at bay. I even managed to eat some of that wild garlic in a rather cement-like falafel dish. Needless to say, that pub didn’t make this cut.

Top of the list is the Woolpack Inn in Slad, technically not on the Cotswold Way but worth every cent of a short taxi ride when you’re in the Painswick area of the walk. Famous for being Cotswold writer Laurie Lee’s local, the Woolpack may just be the best pub in the region. Somehow it manages to combine boozer and foodie havens into one glorious setup with nary an ounce of pretension. We spent a luxurious couple hours drinking real ale on the patio before settling down to the meal of the trip: a tomato salad as pretty as any meadow we had walked through, wild asparagus (a delicious first for me) with roasted asparagus and courgette fritters, and a glorious Eton mess.

We didn’t stay the night in Dursley, but I liked what I saw of the town when we walked through somewhere around day 7. While the villages of the north Cotswolds are stunning, their beauty feels a bit like a precious piece of china locked away in your grandmother’s curio cabinet. Dursley in the south Cotswolds feels the opposite: a place where real people live and work, including a rather spectacular newish-looking public library. We had occasion to meet some of the locals when we stopped for an excellent Sunday roast at the vibrant Old Spot Inn. Here we made the acquaintance of Fly, an Italian greyhound, and his human, both of whom were very nice to us despite the fact that I had inadvertently taken Fly’s normal seat in the booth by the bar.

In Hawkesbury Upton, it’s worth taking the teensiest of detours to lunch at the Beaufort Arms, a big, friendly place filled with locals and serving the kind of plentiful stodge you can happily justify on a 16-mile day. In a mega carbo-load, I downed cheese and onion potato cakes with a shared bowl of cheesy chips while the petite Belgian couple who had passed us earlier in the day nibbled their granary bread sandwiches. Needless to say that was the last time we saw them on the Way.

Finally, I’d be remiss not to mention the Mount Inn in Stanton, overseen by the ever-lovely Pippa who long ago ran the Plough in Cold Aston near our Cotswold home. The Mount Inn is more restaurant than pub, whose excellent food is complimented by the westward-facing vista from their hilltop position. They open at 6PM, but if the weather’s good I recommend arriving a few minutes earlier to nab the bench on the outside deck for some pre-dinner drinks with a view.

Best Bit of Luxury
Conveniently spaced at the nearly halfway and end (or beginning, depending on the direction you walk) points of the Cotswold Way are two opportunities to indulge in a bit of pampering. And let’s face it, walking 10+ miles a day is an excellent excuse for a bit of indulgence. In Painswick, the recently opened and imaginatively named The Painswick, offers a stylish restaurant and hotel. We didn’t stay overnight, but we did have a glass of wine on their wisteria-strewn veranda overlooking the valley followed by a rather posh dinner. I’ll definitely be back, even if my ibérico ham and truffle pizza was served on a tree.

We ended our journey in grand style with a night at the Gainsborough Bath Spa. Arriving in mud-caked boots and waterproof trousers we didn’t exactly fit in with the rest of the clientele, but the gentleman who checked us in treated us like royalty, right down to the bottle of champagne delivered to the room. I like to think it was a congratulatory gift for walking the Cotswold Way, but it turns out they “give” (yes, yes, I know we paid for it in the room price) a bottle to everyone who books direct with the hotel.

Of course the real reason for staying at the Gainsborough is access to Bath’s famed thermal hot springs, which is free to hotel guests in the evenings and early morning. I couldn’t wait that long to take the waters, so I paid the day spa fee and spent several hours relaxing in the various pools, each with slightly different temperatures. In between dips I drank shots of warm chocolate from a slurpee-like dispenser—not the most obvious spa amenity, but I’m a fan—and snapped surreptitious shots of other ridiculousness, like a lion head that barfed lavender ice and came with instructions to scoop handfuls to rub on your entire body. It was entirely divine, as was the whole walk. We’re already talking about doing it again, this time from south to north, but I won’t wait for that to revisit these spots.

The Details

Shenberrow Hill B&B
Stanton
Broadway
Worcestershire WR12 7NE
Tel: +44 (0) 1386 584468

Valley Views B&B
12 Orchard Close
Middleyard
King’s Stanley
Stonehouse
Gloucestershire GL10 3QA
Tel: +44 (0) 1453 827458

The Little Smithy B&B
Smithy House
Tormarton
Badminton
South Gloucestershire GL9 1HU
Tel: + 44 (0) 1454 218412

The Woolpack Inn
Slad Road
Stroud
Gloucestershire GL6 7QA
Tel: +44 (0) 1452 813429

The Old Spot Inn
Hill Road
Dursley
Gloucestershire GL11 4JQ
+44 (0) 1453 542870

Beaufort Arms
High Street
Hawkesbury Upton
Badminton
Gloucestershire GL9 1AU
+44 (0) 1454 238217

The Mount Inn
Stanton
Nr Broadway
Worcestershire WR12 7NE
+44 (0)1386 584316

The Painswick
Kemps Lane
Painswick
Gloucestershire GL6 6YB
+44 (0) 1452 813688

The Gainsborough Bath Spa
Beau Street
Bath BA1 1QY
+44 (0) 1225 358888

Cotswolds Walking

The Cotswold Way: A glutton’s guide to rambling

Posted on May 23, 2016

Photo by Richard Cocks, licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Today at 8AM sharp we set off on our nine-day walk along the Cotswold Way, 102-miles of British National Trail from the market town of Chipping Campden to the Georgian city of Bath along a Jurassic-era escarpment. I have wanted to walk it ever since I learned of its existence, both because I am incessant box-ticker—the sort who risks perverting experiences into acts of consumption—and because I know a long walk is one of the few things that can release my mind from my incessant box-ticking.

While it promises breathtaking landscapes and acres of mud, the Cotswold Way is not exactly the deep wilderness one associates with famed American trails like the Appalachian or Pacific Crest. I’m assured there haven’t been any bears in England since medieval times, which means the most aggressive animal we’re likely to encounter is a frolicking lamb or grazing cow. At any given time we won’t be much farther than an hour from a pub, so dehydration is unlikely, too. Indeed, one of the things I’m most looking forward to is kicking off the boots at the end of a long day of tramping through fields and downing a guilt-free pint or three.

Mercifully, camping along the trail is discouraged and we’ll be spending almost every night safely ensconced in a B&B. When on our last day we reach the end of the trail at Bath Abbey, we’ll check into a proper hotel, complete with thermal hot springs from the city’s famed waters in which to soothe our by-then aching muscles. All of this to say it’s the perfect walking holiday for gluttons of both scenery and gastronomy—just enough miles, hills, and pounds hefted in our packs to feel righteous as we rock up to the pub for supper each night. At least that’s the plan. Not in the plan but undoubtedly on the horizon: blisters, lumpy beds, and umpteen fights over directions. And if I’m lucky, somewhere around day five the box-ticking will stop and box and its ticker will briefly become one. Let the rambling begin.

Cotswolds

Anarchy at Kelmscott Manor

Posted on April 18, 2016

View of Kelmscott Manor from the back garden

On Saturday we visited Kelmscott Manor, the rural Oxfordshire former retreat of William Morris and his family, as well as the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Upon arrival we were ambushed by an enthusiastic docent who immediately pointed out the location of the loos, a greeting that I suspect is fine-tuned to address the most pressing needs of the pensioner demographic that comprises the majority of visitors. When it comes to leisure activities, I have always been old before my time.

The docent’s overview of the grounds also included a tearoom, and, with fifteen minutes to kill until our timed-entry ticket was valid and rain clouds threatening overhead, we decamped to the whitewashed barn for a cup of tea drunk from William Morris-patterned mugs. In the entryway of the house we were “greeted” by another guide who blocked our way until she completed her elaborate explanation of the one-way system we were to follow as we proceeded through the property. When finally allowed to pass, we discovered the downstairs rooms were filled with pottery, tapestries, and a striking portrait by Rossetti of Jane Morris, who was both Rossetti’s muse and purported lover, as well as William’s wife.

Portrait of Jane Morris by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

In the Green Room yet another docent—this one sporting an impressive outcropping of black hair in his ears—explained that one of the couches on display was produced by Morris’ company from inexpensive boxwood so that it would be affordable by the middle class. He went on to tell us that most of what was produced would have only been accessible to the elite, a curious irony given Morris was an impassioned socialist (some of the socialist pamphlets he penned are on display in the attic) and one that reminded me of the paradox of the modern-day artisanal movement.

Upstairs we made the fatal mistake of viewing the attic rooms before the first floor, inadvertently violating the one-way system instructions. After tense negotiations with another volunteer, we managed to regain entry. For a brief moment as we walked up the down stairs, I felt what it was to be an anarchist.

Of all the treasures on view in the manor, the one I found most striking isn’t mentioned in the pamphlet they hand you at the door. In the North Hall, hanging from a door that’s partially obscured by a grand hooded settee, is William Morris’ black overcoat. It’s a caped style à la Sherlock Holmes and patently lacking in the aesthetic qualities most often associated with Morris.

Morris’ overcoat

Later, while dipping soldiers of garlic bread into hens egg en cocotte at the excellent local pub, The Plough Inn, I realized what the coat reminded me of. In Patti Smith’s most recent memoir, M Train, she has a habit of taking Polaroids of everyday items that belonged to artists she loves—Virginia Woolf’s walking stick, Herman Hesse’s typewriter. If Smith had visited Kelmscott, the coat would’ve undoubtedly gotten the Polaroid treatment. In the book she also recounts how an unnamed poet gave her an ill-fitting, unlined Commes de Garçons black overcoat as an impromptu birthday gift. Later, much to her distress, she loses the coat.

Perhaps the Society of Antiquaries of London that runs Kelmscott Manor would consider loaning Morris’ coat to Smith as a replacement. Like Morris, Smith is an artist who wears many hats, from poet to writer to artist (in her case, Polariods instead of textiles). I can’t help thinking they would’ve gotten along had they been contemporaries, and that Morris would’ve approved of the loan as heartily as the busybody docents of the manor would object.

The Details:

Kelmscott Manor (open Wednesdays and Saturdays, April to October)
Kelmscott
Lechlade, Oxfordshire GL7 3HG
+44 01367 252486

The Plough
Kelmscott
Lechlade, Oxfordshire GL7 3HG
+44 01367 253543

Cotswolds

Easter

Posted on March 28, 2016

Our version of going to church on Easter Sunday was informal, stopping in to the Norman church of Saint James the Great in Coln St. Dennis towards the end of a long walk.

The churchyard is overgrown in the back and inside there are small piles of stone dust and water stains high on the walls. Alongside the signs of dilapidation is the evidence this is still a working church: an electric heater installed behind the pulpit to warm the calves of the rector, vases of browning daffodils.

On a wall in the rear hangs a list of rectors from 1272 – 2010, an improbable symbol of permanence in a structure that felt fragile. Husband and I had spent the walk talking, occasionally with raised voices, about our next moves—geographical and career—in life. I was feeling untethered, a sense that was heightened by the general state of terrorist-related anxiety across Europe. This historical record calmed me, a gold-inscribed reminder that life goes on.

As we left the church we carried on past our normal turn-off, walking into Calcot. The road opens up as you ascend out of the valley and we were greeted by strong wind at our back and tiny pieces of hail hammering the back of our legs until, on the final stretch, it stopped and this appeared.

Cotswolds

An Atheist Goes to Church

Posted on November 14, 2015

The War Memorial in Northleach

By luck we were back in the Cotswolds last weekend for Remembrance Day, so we joined our village for the ceremony at the local war memorial followed by a service at our church.

While I’m an atheist for all intents and purposes, attending church in the Cotswolds has always been a non-issue for me. Perhaps because I was raised Presbyterian or perhaps because village churches are intricately woven into this Cotswold landscape I love, I’ve always found a sense of comfort in their drafty Anglican sanctuaries.

On this Remembrance Day I attended church out of respect and to sit for an hour in a still, sacred place.

If my use of the term “sacred” jars, allow it. I mean it in the dictionary sense of something that is both highly valued and important, and deserving of great respect. Of course we all know the reasons religion isn’t to be highly valued nor deserving of great respect. The list is as long as my arm, as old as the crusades, as recent as the ISIS massacre in Paris last night. But on this occasion church was sacred. It was also a reminder of how much work we have yet to do to create secular institutions that replace the sacred functions historically provided by the church.

These sacred functions were laid out in the major sections of the order of service: The Gathering, Listening for the Word from God, Praying Together, Remembering, and The Act of Commitment. With some secular adjustments—changing “Listening for the Word from God” to simply “Listening,” and “Praying Together” to something like “Sharing Hopes and Burdens”—it’s a blueprint for a secular approach to community.

During “Remembering,” the group of people bearing the poppy wreath moved to the church’s War Memorial by the south door and, as The Last Post sounded, we, the congregation, turned to face them. An elderly gentleman, the leader of the wreath party, kept silence for a long time. Long enough to feel the grief of those long-ago wars and the grief of the world today. Long enough for me to appreciate the rare opportunity to grieve with others.

And of course there were hymns. Speaking on behalf of the tone deaf of the world, one of the unparallelled benefits of church is the opportunity to sing with abandon. And for anyone who loves language, it’s hard to beat hymns. I don’t remember the name of the hymn in question, but I do remember marvelling at seeing such an elegant use of the underused word “concord.”

Perhaps the most striking part of the service was the last, “The Act of Commitment,” in which the congregation is asked to say out loud that “we will” seek to heal the wounds of war and work for a just future of all humanity. I know they’re just words, but there’s a simple power in asking that people speak them in front of other people, without the virtual veil of Twitter or Facebook. And I know of nowhere else that I’d be asked to say aloud such radical things.

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