I started off the day with cereal (I’ve given up on eggs and bacon after a few days of it—it seems like a good idea, but you taste it in eggy burps on the trail for hours. Ugh) and toast with honey harvested by my B&B host. A far finer meal than the salmon pasta bake at the local pub (what was I thinking?). Even my host acknowledged that the pub is a bit dodgy. But not before I’d gone there, alas. Should have gone to the Food Coop and bought a sandwich, as I did the night before.

The day’s walk skirts the western edge of the Cotswold hills, the big long chain of stony hills that give the area its name and its reputation for all that honey stone architecture. The trail has shifted in character in several ways, as this day of walking affirmed. At the start, the valleys were small, the towns tiny hamlets, and the prospects were of a series of smaller hills. The views may be dramatic at times, but the scale is more like you have a checkerboard of areas of population.

Once you shift to the western edge of the hills (around Cleeve Hill, day 2), you are faced with the vast flat plains to the west, reaching all the way to the Severn River. There are bigger population centers, with the trail neatly cutting around Cheltenham (day 3) to its east and then south of it, moving west a few miles before the path heads south again. (Of course, the path snakes a lot; I’m talking larger trends).

But those big western views change the mood. Civilization is on a bigger scale here, with industrial plants visible and, in days 3 and 4, sometimes with the sound of traffic in the distance from one of the big highways. Day 5 has a lot of time with the sound of highways in the afternoon. The closer to Bath I get, the more populous the region becomes.

It also becomes more heavily forested, with the trail moving through several major woods that make for tranquil walking. The first half of the day had a fair amount of forest walking, with breaks for lovely views.

The day’s big demoralizer and big thrill is Cam Long Down, a little chunk of hill that pops up just a few hundred yards west of the main range. There are two other little outlier hills right by it, creating an interesting bit of landscape. Demoralizing because you can see as you approach how steep the ascent will inevitably be. Thrilling when you reach the top.

Though my hilltop thrill was weirdly tainted when three guys in their late teens came riding along that windy rolling top from the other direction (Though you see trees from the base in the photos above, on top, it’s a big set of rolling green). Not realizing their voices carried, or not caring, one said to the other, speculating about me (I assume), “Probably German.” Don’t ask me why the English kids with enough money to be out riding in fancy riding clothes on a Friday morning see me in hiking gear and think ‘German.’ When we were a bit closer (now maybe twenty yards apart), I said “Good morning” in the very clearest, accent-free way possible. “Bon jour,” said one of our lads, who I am sure thought this the height of wit. Speaking French to the guy you just asserted to your friends is probably German. What a larf. Kids today, I tell ya.

Eventually, after 6.5 miles (which I know doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re gaining and losing altitude all the time, it’s a lot), I came to the town of Dursley, which I imagine holds a grudge against J.K. Rowling for using the name for Harry’s awful family. I had no complaints—finally got to buy some nail scissors to cut my moleskin, so I won’t be reliant on bandaids to do all the blister prevention work. (I somehow forgot to pack my nail scissors or Swiss Army knife. Good work, Hank.)

An aggressive climb up a hill brings the path to yet another golf course, and this time the path basically makes a full loop of the hilltop course, coming back to within 300 yards of where it first hits the course (for cheaters, there is a shortcut across the course, but that would be wrong). I looked at all these men out playing golf and thought ‘These guys are nuts, hitting a little ball around and walking after it for 18 holes.’ And I suppose they were looking at me and thinking ‘These walkers are nuts, tramping around for miles and miles just to get to another town you can reach by car in five minutes.’ Fair enough; we’re all nuts.

The path then heads down off the height, only to rise again for the next hill, which houses the Tyndale Monument, a great tall spire erected to memorialize William Tyndale, who first translated the bible into English (I think I’ve got that right…) Nice enough, but after getting up the hill, there was no way I was climbing the spiral staircase inside to get to the top!

Then down again through more woods and eventually past big fields of corn to the Jubilee Memorial, a fenced in circle of trees above Wotton-Under-Edge. Here I met a pack of ponies roaming and grazing. Nice chaps.

Then down the hill to the town. I was feeling anti-social tonight (or maybe just tired—it’s getting hard to tell the difference), so rather than do a pub or restaurant, I stopped in at a grocery store, bought two small pork pies and a Diet Coke, and retired to the B&B to read and eat and sleep in the quiet of my room. A good day of walking, all in all.

Miles walked: 14.5