Pennsylvania to Bath

This is more like it, I thought, as we started out on our nine-mile walk to the ancient city of Bath. Unlike the disappointing scenery of the day before, and despite having to start our walk through the dreaded wheat fields again, there were beguiling panoramas, historical sites, and the odd cow or two.

But first, here's a little bit about last night. Thank goodness our host drove us to the place where we were to have dinner. I couldn't face walking through the wheat fields again. Joining us for dinner were our friends from Canada and Oxford. Marilyn sent her husband and children home and decided to try her first walk alone. The Oxford couple are experienced walkers. They make walking look effortless. I, in contrast, put a lot of facial and ambulatory effort into it.

I was in a much better mood after we and our genial companions had raised a glass of beer or wine and saluted the day. The woman who owned the restaurant/tea shop/farm store and who served us our dinners was also very interesting. She has six children, five grandchildren, the shop to run, and new puppies and a pig (that will never be the headliner at dinner) to raise. Everyone joined in the conversation and a lot of hooting and hollering went on. Then Sarah, the shop owner, drove us back to our B&B.

Here's a footnote about the pig. When we were tramping over to the shop in the afternoon to have some tea, I accidentally almost opened the pig's gate. It is a huge pig and it would have won a mud wrestling contest with me hands down. Turns out the pig started out as a small pet pig, like a pot-bellied pig (only not). The owner didn't want it, so Sara said she'd take it. A lot of good food later, the pig is huge. It's now a living garbage disposal.

Anyway, back to the walk. It started through the dreaded wheat fields and was followed by a mad dash across a highway of death. But after that, a lot of the paths were either paved or well-maintained. We had the usually rocky paths, overgrown paths, tipsy paths, and another encounter or two with a highway of death, but they were usually short.

This is what everyone at the B&B told us: You'll have an easy day; it's nine miles, all downhill.

Hah! But I'm jumping ahead of the story.

The first easy path was a narrow, paved country road. Whenever a car came by, Tom and I flattened ourselves against the hedges. Whenever a car met another car coming in the opposite direction, one of them would have to back up until the other could get by. There weren't a whole lot of opportunities for passing. The lane was also a bridle path, heavily attested to by the horse manure in the middle of the road.

Here's today's puzzler. A car passed us. Minutes later two horses and their riders came toward us. As we walked along, we realized there was no way they could have passed each other. None. Someone would have had to back up quite a way, and it wasn't the car.

Much later we found out why there were so many cars going in the same direction we were. There was a "Special Plants" garden sale going on. That was the name of the place: Special Plants. We had to go in. I took some pictures of the odder plants before I felt self-conscious and stopped. I wanted to take a picture of everything!

We came to a path with a panoramic view and a bench (hallelujah). But there were two women already on the bench. Oh, please, they said, take the bench, we were leaving anyway. But, of course, we started to talk. One of the women was a retired schoolteacher. She said the first day of the next school year after she retired, she walked up to the bench, looked at her watch, and said, now the children are doing their maths, and I'm not. She grinned. Her friend grinned. They both looked as if they were relishing their walk, even though at least one of them had done it many times. That's the way to live life.

Although the sun was hot and there was no mitigating cool breeze, it was a pleasant walk. Then we hit what we thought was the last rocky downhill path into Bath. Hooray, we said. Tom and I took pictures of each other with a suburb of Bath in the background.

When we got down into the suburb, we were giddy. Not much longer now and we'll be having a cream tea, 7-Up, water, champagne, whatever. Tom estimated a half a mile at the most, according to the book. Uh, hmm, that's funny, he said.

Funny?

The guide says to watch out for all the uphill paths. Oh, Tom said, the guide must mean if you're coming out of Bath to go to Chipping Camden. I know, you're thinking, that doesn't make any sense. But it made sense to Tom and me at the time. Because we wanted it to.

What a cruel joke! What an unnecessary twist  to the ending! We could have just walked on the sidewalk next to the main street into Bath. But no. The guide had us going up steep paths (including one through a field!) to pop out next to a faux Royal Crescent with a pitch-and-putt in front of it. What should have been an easy 15-minute walk into Bath turned into a torturous 45-minute agony of "de feet."

Okay, so after we popped back out into civilization again, the path did take us past all the wonderful architectural sights of Bath, including the real Royal Crescent. We later figured the total mileage to the end of the walk was between 10-1/2 and 11 miles.

Our B&B was right on The Way, a half a mile from the finish line. I was too tired and thirsty and footsore and spouting gibberish at that point. Maybe tomorrow morning we could finish the walk.

After a great dinner at the restaurant next door, we wandered around the town. We wound up at Bath Abbey. Tom said it was the end point of the walk, so we started looking for a marker. We had almost completed a circuit around the huge structure when we saw ... our walking companion, the woman from Oxford. And seconds later, up popped her husband.

They had completed the walk that afternoon and looked around and around the Abbey for the marker, too. They had decided to come back after dinner to continue their search. Where is it? I asked. They smiled little cat smiles. You're standing on it. Below our feet was a fancy circular plaque with a picture of a golden acorn.

If our Oxford friends hadn't told us about the plaque, we would have gone home a little disappointed. How fortuitous was that meeting? We talked for quite a while and finally parted ways. Despite the joy we took in each other's acquaintance, we'll never see each other again, but our meeting this evening was meant to be, don't you think?

Walking out of Pennsylvania, we found unintentional art and a garden with hundreds of roses.

The first door is from Cold Ashton (near Pennsylvania), and the rest are from Bath.

From Special Plants. The second picture is of a geranium. Really!

One last monument to Lord Somebody from his grandson. It is placed near the battlefield of the English civil war. There was a poignant story on the plaque of two friends who fought on opposite sides. When will we ever learn, eh?

Tom is busy examining the last topograph, looking for Bath. Psst, it's to your left.

The Way went through yet another golf course. This one bisected the course. Our timing had to be good! Yes, that's the wheat field. Yes, that's a picture of me celebrating the "last" downhill road into Bath. Hah!

The view from our B&B window. Bath is famous (as is Chipping Camden) for using Cotswold stone.

Bath Abbey

The weir next to the bridge that's like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.

I just like flowers.

This is the view through a closed shop on the bridge over the river by the weir that Jack built.

This is for Nancy.

Excelsior! Excalibur! Excitement! Excellent! The commemorative plaque ending our trip.

So ends our tale.

Old Sodbury to Pennsylvania (Not THAT One)/Cold Ashton

I guess there had to be one day that was the worst. This was it.

Out of the nine and a half miles we walked, eight can be consigned to the bin. There were sterile paths through wheat fields. Gorse, thistle, nettles, and blackberry vines tugging at us from either side of the narrow, overgrown paths. Plus, we had to contend with highways of death, dodging dodgy Dodges and the like. Bleah.

When we got to Pennsylvania, it was too early to check in, so we walked through more wheat fields and highways of death to get to the tea place. I almost opened the gate to the pigpen instead of the farmyard, where the tea place (and our dinner place) is set. It was a monster pig.

The good news is that our host will drive us to the farm for dinner, and the server will drive us back. I don't think I could face another wheat field.

This was the only funny thing we saw on the walk.

Okay, maybe there were two funny things. These were the remnants of a stile.

I even resorted to taking pastoral images of sheep.

Crossing the big highway of death via a smaller highway of death. Many more highways of death followed. We were either on them or running across them. Yaaaaa, I said as I ran across the road.

This image is enhanced because I wanted you to see the extreme terracing. We hadn't seen anything like it.

This will be our new home. Please come and visit. We have plenty of room. (Actually it's Dryham Manor, where "Remains of the Day" was shot.)

And this is a bench in my new garden.

I loved this little triangle of green space. A bench for no reason.

Wotten-Under-Edge to Old Sodbury

The Swedes had gone, the Scots had pulled ahead. We were alone again. But then we made new friends. That's the way with the walk. The hardships and fun of The Way make comrades of us all.

One of our new friends is a woman who sent her husband and children back to Canada and is walking from about the half-way point to Bath by herself. She says she gets lost a lot. Join the crowd, I said.

Two of our other new friends are Brits who are sort of on the same itinerary as we are. There was one lone bench on the 13-mile walk between Wotten-Under-Edge and Old Sodbury. They were on it when we walked by. Genially, they offered to share the bench. But I knew that if I sat down, it would take a crowbar to get me going again. They passed us soon after, but we caught them in Little Sodbury.

Don't you love the names of these towns. By the way, it's Wotten-Under-Edge, not "on edge," as if it were a place for tense people to go. And Wotten is pronounced "Woo-en," with the "t" swallowed. And Cirencester is pronounced "Sear-en-ster." And Frocester is pronounced "Froster." Now you know.

As far as we can tell, there aren't many of us on the walk. We don't meet people the way we did on the Coast-to-Coast. They'd probably be dropping like flies because it has been so hot and humid. One barfly told me that this was very unusual weather; it's usually in the 70s and raining. So which would I prefer? Very, very hard to say.

A little ways into today's walk, Tom said, "See that hill?" Gulp. "For some reason we go by it but not up it." Ha, ha, Cave. LOL.

That's not to say there weren't ups and downs. There was a steep but short climb up at the beginning and a long, long, long walk down that followed. I think we are sinking lower into the valley. There have been gentle, long ups, but not as many as there were downs. It's hotter in the valley. Is there a hill I can climb for a fresh breeze?

Our change in elevation might also have to do with our seeing and hearing more birds and bees. The bees are busy in the blackberry hedgerows. The birds warn each other of our coming. The rooster just can't figure out if he's coming or going.

After seeing so many pigs and cows and horses, you would think we'd be able to tell them apart. We saw some spotted somethings. I thought they were goats. Tom said they were cows. Cows? They're little, I said. Then they're giraffe cows, he insisted. City boy.

After about a mile's walk out of Wotten, we were perched high above the town and could hear the Sunday bells ringing away. The day was full of mostly flat wide paths. This one was dirt that turned into a rocky road. It was quiet, except for the bells, and the sun was getting ready to blister us. There was no one else around. Until ... here came two runners (!) heading towards us. A cyclist behind us started laughing. We all hit the same point in the path at the same time. Right behind the runners were two MORE runners. A veritable traffic jam. After that, nary a soul crossed our path for quite a while.

Because the hike was 13 miles long, we passed through all kinds of forest and farmland, but there were stretches, unlike on the other days, when the way was wide, even, and flat. That contrasted with the couple of times that The Way was lost in tall grass and we found ourselves hacking our way forward. There were lots of open fields, too. I wasn't afraid of lightning striking me today, so there was no dashing for cover (that probably would have gotten me struck by lightning faster).

The view from the window this morning. Yikes!

The fog lifted and  we saw this cute cottage on the way out of town.

I like this because it's the "Katherine Lady Berkeley Mews." How'd you like to have that as your address?

There's a pollen-coated bee in one of the hollyhocks. The orange flower is a weed, I think, but it's pretty. The clematis surrounding the morning glory is drooping badly. I have no idea what that last thing is.

A monument to blah, blah, blah...high hill, blah, blah.

NOT a monument. A home for wayward barn owls and wrens.

There was so much water from the rains yesterday.

This friendly guy wasn't spooked by us.

We shared this view with the couple on the bench in the middle of nowhere.

The Drover's Road. It went on for a blessed mile or so, but it was hot.

Vine covered. Probably will be overcome by next year.

This Old Sodbury hedge was clipped to perfection.

Dursley to Wotten-on-Edge

Our B&B in Dursley was next door to a raucous pub. But at 11:30 p.m. the noise blinked out like a light. I fell asleep. At 12:30 lightning flashed and thunder boomed. That went on for hours. Oh, well, I thought, get it out of your system now, so it will be nice and cool for our walk tomorrow. (Remember, it's all about me.)

Well. Apparently the whole valley boomed and lit up with hundreds (if not thousands) of lightning strikes. The cool and warm breezes I felt yesterday while walking were magnified in the upper atmosphere. There was a war going on up there, and the victor had not yet been declared. In other words, we awoke to rain, lightning, and thunder.

Cab? I said.

Mercifully, it was a relatively short walk of seven and a half miles. Unmercifully, it climbed way up and descended way down. From the town of Dursley I could see a tower of some sort way up on a hill. Uh, oh, I thought, I know what this means. Yep.

As we sloshed our way up the hill, Tom kept reading his now rain-soaked guide. There apparently were 120 steps that we'd eventually get to if we weren't roasted by the lightning. Oh, boy, I thought, 120 steps. These steps would lead us to the tower, a monument someone erected in memory of someone else. (They're big in these parts on erecting memorials on tops of hills, then creating lots of confusing footpaths up to them.)

At one point in the forest travels, the way was so dark that Tom could not read his guide. I kept wiping my glasses off, but it wasn't my glasses that were the problem; it really was foggy and dark.

Cab now? I thought.

All the while we were walking through the forest to get to the tower, I could hear the booming of thunder. Sometimes it was scarily close. As we neared the top, a sign proclaimed the 120 steps closed until further notice. Oh, boy, now what. I was worried that we would be circling the hill to get to the top. Circling and circling. The 120 steps didn't look so bad any more. But I needn't have worried. It was a simple long switchback that took us to the top.

The tower was set in a meadow. That's right. An open field. With lightning and thunder.

Yaaaa, I said as I ran to the tower.

Do you want to go up the tower? asked Tom. What, I said, are you nuts. Yaaaa, I said, as I ran from the tower to the "safety" of the next set of woods. The actual paths weren't so bad, but they were dark and endless and slippery.

I was sooooo happy to reach the town of Wotten-on-Edge. Of course, the rain, etc. ceased shortly after we arrived. We had gotten to town two and a half hours ahead of when we could get into our B&B. We looked like drowned rats and smelled worse, but the local pub let us in. Sit anywhere you like, they said. I love rural communities.

Below are pictures taken from the window of the bedroom. This is a priceless view. I can't help looking out. There are usually cows in the pasture. When I took the picture, they must have gone home for a little bit. But now that it's late evening, they are back. Goodnight, cows.

This is what I saw at about 1:30.

See that vague, looming shape on the top of that hill?

Mud! It was like skating.

Instead of the 120 steps, we got to climb Mt. Everest.

Yes, it was stupid.

Apparently there's a nice view from the top. I'll never, never, never know.

This is one of the views from my bedroom window.

This is another view from the bedroom window. Note the blue skies.

As I was running from the tower, I took this picture of the valley below. I'm sure it's spectacular, but all I could see were the dour and nasty skies.

This is my flower picture for the day. From the garden of my Wotten-on-Edge hostess.

King's Stanley to Dursley

Tom has invented the concept of "cheesitude." It is the rating a hill receives in comparison to Cooper's Hill, the hill they roll the cheese down. (See http://youtu.be/KOyQBSMeIhM for a vivid portrayal of the crazy things people will do. P.S. The prize is the cheese that everyone chases down the hill.)

Cooper's Hill is, of course, a 10. At one point, Tom looked down the hill in the forest where we were walking and said that it had a cheesitude of 8. After that we judged cheesitudes. Below is a  picture of an awesome 10 on the cheesitude scale.

There was thunder and lightning last night. It even woke me up from a dead (I say, DEAD) sleep. Uh, oh, I thought, guess we're walking in rain tomorrow. But by morning, the sky was blue and it was already starting to heat up.

Ugh. It was hot AND humid. I was drenched before we had even gone a quarter mile. What's more miserable than rain? Sun. Even our friendly cool breeze had deserted us. I had to re-apply my sunscreen because it was dripping off my face. I thought, as I looked at how miserable Tom and I were, that only crazy people hike here in July.

We walked up to the first viewpoint. Below is a picture of what we could see from that viewpoint. I have christened the day smuggy. Smoggy and muggy.

It was more ups and downs. At breakfast our hostess asked us what we thought of The Cotswold Way. I answered too honestly and said I thought it would be more gently rolling hills with bunnies. (That's the Cotswolds to the east of here, by the way.) Tom said we were surprised by all the ups and downs. She was taken aback. "But you have the wonderful views," she said. Yep.

In fact, it is a great place to walk. The valleys are picturesque. The hills are cool and well-preserved. Anyplace that has sheep and walkers wandering around willy-nilly on their golf courses gets my vote. Just bring lots of blister packs.

As the day crept along, especially on the forest paths and up on the hills, the cool breeze made a comeback, fought valiantly with the warm breeze, and sometimes won. One-half of my face would be cool and the other half would be warm as the competing breezes swirled around.

As we came down (why, when we're only going to go up again) into a valley, I stared off into the distance. There was a hill. There was flatness everywhere else. Tom said, "We're going up that hill." Of course. He said, "It sounds sort of Chinese, Cam Long Down." Cam Long UP, I thought.

The hill was hiding a ridge. We and a bunch of cows walked the ridge. It was wonderful. The views were great because the smog had mostly cleared. We could see the village where we'd be staying. Those are the luckiest cows (for now, at least).

We got into town early enough that I drank a 7-UP, a pot of tea, and a half pint of ale before checking into our B&B. And I was still thirsty.

The 10 a.m. view versus the 2 p.m. shot of the valley. Smuggy versus not-so-smuggy.

There was a sign for falling rocks. Where? I thought. There were only trees and lots of dirt. After about a half an hour, this came into view. The land is rich with hidden rock. Quarries are everywhere.

Ominous trees with a message for walkers.

This is the trail. Do you think these trees are also trying to tell us something?

A barrow on one of the high hills.

This is a topograph. It points out how far away everything is, not counting the elevation. The Severn River is nine miles away, eighty-two if you count the ups and downs. The "cheesitude" of this hill was a 10!

These are such pretty steps, I said to Tom. By the third lengthy set of them, I was calling them These Fucking Steps.

Sun is great if it's on the other side of the leaves.

Contented cows.

Before and after. (Look, there's a hill surrounded by flat, flat land.)

Waiting in the pub next door for the B&B to open up. Do we care if it ever opens up?

In the forest something hopped past me. It was this tiny, tiny camouflaged frog. That's the tip of my walking stick for reference.

Rose hips, morning glory, and I-don't-know-what

Dursley, at last. It's a happening town. Two pharmacies. A large supermarket. A choice of tea places. Friendly people! Three people stopped us to talk about The Cotswold Way and to help us with directions, all within 15 minutes.

This is for Nancy.

This was our first sight of Dursley. Every town, village, and whistle stop has an old, old church. What's the oldest something can be in Portland. Exactly.