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

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The escarpment is gained and lost countless times on the way to Bath, the first day or two offering a particular abundance of fresh excuses to descend to the plain and then climb up again. There are field paths, woodland trails, old drove-roads and saltways, green lanes and minor roads winding between hedgerows lively with sparrows and wrens, fragrant with honeysuckle in spring and early summer, and with huge panoramas across the plains.

From Stanway there’s an up-and-down stretch to the ruins of Hailes Abbey and across undulating farmland to Winchcombe, with its pretty cottages, village stocks and gargoyles round the church. After Winchcombe there’s Belas Knap (worth half an hour of anyone’s time), then on to the highest part of the whole route on Cleeve Common.

Cleeve Common leads to Leckhampton Hill, another lofty belvedere overlooking Cheltenham, with the eye-catching digit of the Devil’s Chimney jutting from a lower scarp terrace. South of Leckhampton is Crickley Hill, where history, in the form of a hill fort, lies partly exposed, and an observation platform provides an opportunity to look back a thousand years and more.