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

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Flat-topped Cam Long Down captures your attention when seen from the Coaley Peak picnic site (photo: Lesley Williams)

Dursley leads to Stinchcombe Hill, and from there to North Nibley, Nibley Knoll and Wotton-under-Edge. (What names there are to conjure with in the Cotswolds!) Wotton has its millstreams, and the stage beyond Wotton explores a narrow valley lit by a lively little stream that once powered several mills, one of which is passed on the way to Hawkesbury Upton.

Out of Hawkesbury you follow the old trading route of Bath Lane. Tiny Horton is next, closely followed by Little Sodbury and Old Sodbury, through Dodington Park and up to Tormarton, sitting pretty on the edge of a motorway hell. Dyrham seems all but forgotten in its leafy dell. Cold Ashton smiles out to the south and, as you leave it along Greenways Lane, so a luxurious bowl of countryside draws you on.

It’s not far then to Bath. Over the Battlefields, along the escarpment once more, round a golf course and across an Iron Age hill fort and you come to Prospect Stile, with the first view of Bath lying in its hollow. Best of all is the view onto Kelston Round Hill, one of the finest of all hills seen since leaving Chipping Campden. The onward route leads round its shoulder and down to Regency Bath, along a maze of elegant streets until at last you come face to face with that gem of an abbey. That sight alone is worth walking the Cotswold Way for.