Introduction
This National Trail roughly follows the Cotswold escarpment for 104 miles from Chipping Campden south-westwards to Bath. As with most long distance paths, there are no fixed stages other than those dictated by the choice of accommodation, personal preferences and capabilities, and time available. People tend to take between 7 and 10 days to complete it; we did it in 8 and included the travel from and to our home towns (Derby & Nottingham) in the first and last days. This was ok but meant we had to balance those short days with 3 relatively long days of around 16 miles.
It was actually a bit of an experiment for us this year. Not only was my daughter Mel back walking with me (she was otherwise occupied for last year’s Offa’s Dyke attempt) but my wife Jill and Mel’s husband Mehul came along too. It had taken gentle persuasion over a few years to get them to give it a try but Jill had taken a fancy to the Cotswold Way and I reckon Mehul had only really been waiting for a suitably moderate challenge to give it a go!
There were compromises of course. Mehul had done a fair bit of walking including a couple of backpacking weekends, one of them camping, but he didn’t feel too excited at the idea of carrying the full gear for 100 miles. Jill and I have done hundreds of day walks of all kinds together but she’d only done one backpacking weekend before and had absolutely no intention of ever carrying camping gear or dossing in a tent after a long walk! She loves walking and she likes camping if the weather’s good but she’s quite determined that the two should never be combined over long distances. So we all agreed to walk the Cotswold Way carrying our own luggage in backpacks but staying entirely in B&Bs and hotels.
This is the story of our walk, along with plenty of photos. I hope it will provide useful information for anyone planning to do the trail and maybe inspire some who hadn’t even considered trail walking to give it a try!
Day 1 – Chipping Campden to Stanton
Day 2 – Stanton to Cleeve Hill
Day 3 – Cleeve Hill to Birdlip
Day 4 – Birdlip to Stonehouse
Day 5 – Stonehouse to North Nibley
Day 6 – North Nibley to Lower Kilcott
Day 7 – Lower Kilcott to Cold Ashton
Day 8 – Cold Ashton to Bath
Conclusions and tips