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

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Cleeve Common contains the highest land on the Cotswold Way, at over 1000ft (300m), and is one of the last remaining ancient grasslands. As many as 150 species of herbs and grasses may be found there, and it is now a Grade 1 site of special scientific interest.

White oxeye daises are abundant among the grasslands. Bird’s-foot trefoil, scabious, kidney vetch, thyme, salad burnet and hoary plantain, rockrose and knapweeds all combine to provide a tapestry of colour, while the hedgerows are often tangled with wild clematis (old man’s beard), and clumps of hawthorn shower the slopes with a froth of bloom in springtime.

Bullfinches and yellow hammers flash to and fro among the hawthorn bushes, alternating between thorn bush and gorse. Woodpeckers rattle the deadwoods, buzzards and kestrels hang seemingly motionless high above open hill slopes, alert for any sign of voles or mice far below. Pheasants will almost certainly threaten the unwary with heart failure as they practically explode from under your boots as you wander along the overgrown edge of a field, or through a woodland in autumn. Deer may be sighted in some of the larger woodlands and, with a short detour from the way into Dyrham Park, there’s a large herd of fallow deer, reckoned to be one of the oldest in Britain, while foxes and badgers, rabbits, hares and countless grey squirrels may all be seen along the way.