Читать книгу The Cotswold Way. NATIONAL TRAIL Two-way trail guide - Chipping Campden to Bath онлайн

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At the end of the last ice age, some 10,000 years ago, the bare bones of the Cotswolds were given a flesh of vegetation. At first, no doubt, the wolds would have been colonised by deciduous woodlands, but in Neolithic times clearings were made and primitive forms of agriculture attempted on the virgin land. With successive generations the open spaces grew until, by the Middle Ages, the Cotswolds were one vast sheep walk. Then the process of agricultural evolution exchanged pasture for arable land and, following the Enclosures smaller fields were created. Now, it appears, the wheels of evolution are turning once more.

Plants and wildlife

Three seasons’ colours on the Cotswold Way

To the flower-loving wayfarer Cotswold limestone brings a rich treasury of orchids (green-winged and early purple in late April and May, common spotted, pyramid, musk, bee and frog in the full flush of summer), harebells and cowslips in the meadows, wild garlic (ramsons) massed with bluebells in damp, shaded woodlands in springtime, following a green carpet of dog’s mercury towards the end of winter.