Cotswolder Travel Guide

The towns of Stroud and Nailsworth are in steep river valleys. Two hundred years ago this was an industrial area with many mills on the rivers. They made cloth, walking sticks, umbrellas. The mills used the rivers for power. Villages formed on the steep hillsides above the mills.

Part of the Cotswold Canals runs down the Stroud valley, at one time connecting the River Severn and the River Thames. The canal was a main transporation link for this industrial area. It is being restored, but British Waterways just pulled their funding, so the restoration which was planed to be completed in ten years will take longer. There is a canal tunnel that runs from Sapperton to Coates for over two miles (3817 yards, 2.16 miles). The tunnel has collapsed in parts, but each end of it has been restored. There are good pubs at each end (The Bell in Sapperton and Tunnel House Inn near Coates) and good trails along the canal. Perfect for a hike and then a pub lunch.

But how did I get onto canals? This post is about donkeys!

Many of the mills are still here, but now they are apartments, offices, workshops. The steep river valleys still have steep walking paths connecting the villages with the valley floor.

Tonight on the BBC news there was a story about people in Chalford, a small town just up the valley from Stroud, where the hill is so steep that many residents can only get to their houses by a walking path - Shoppers seek donkey for bag help.

Residents of Chalford on Rack Hill have to carry their groceries on foot up the 100 meter path (that does not sound that long to me, but I guess if it is steep and you are carrying stuff, it is a hike). They have decided to get a donkey from a donkey sanctuary and use it for village transport.

In Bradford-on-Avon, on the River Avon a few miles from Bath, the weavers’ cottages are on a hillside overlooking the town. Small pedestrial lanes connect the rows of cottages. When Steve and I first saw this area - we were having lunch in the tea room and the man at the next table told us about the weavers’ cottages and how to find them - we decided we had to live in Bradford-on-Avon, in a weavers cottage. I watched the Bradford rental listings for a year and never saw one of them for rent.

Bradford-on-Avon Weavers’ Cottages

Since then we have found similar hillside weavers’ cottages in other areas. There is a small area in Nailsworth, on the hillside above Egypt Mill. And I guess there is one in Chalford (we will go check it out and report back).

In other news, there is a cycle/walking path connecting Bristol and Bath, but the city council wants to run busses on part of it. There was a big protest recently because people feel this will drastically change the nature of this path. Walkers and bikers will have to dodge buses. But the traffic is very thick and the council sees this as a way of making the bus system work.

Maybe they could take a lesson from Chalford and try carts pulled by donkeys?

Eight weeks seems like a long time when you are booking it, but now that we are here the time is going by in a flash. We are already past the half way point and I don’t even know Nailsworth yet, let alone the Cotswolds. On Saturday we walked across town to the Ruskin and Horsley Mills on the south side of town. They are in a narrow river valley with pretty neighborhoods of old cottages.

It was bright and sunny this morning, so we walked into town for bread from Hobbs Bakery and a newspaper. We took the short route into town, but the longer route back on the Cycle Trail. When we were close to home, it started to rain. After we got in, it started pouring. A nice rainy day! I celebrated by adding a small Google Map to the home page.

There is detailed coverage of the American primaries in the newspapers, on the radio and on TV. The Guardian had a special section today about “Super Tuesday”. We are probably hearing as much about the primaries here as we would in the US, but we have to wait until tomorrow to learn today’s results.

No will power - I promised myself that I would NOT watch season five of Spooks, because once that is watched we have to wait until October for season six on DVD. We waited one day after the end of season four, then plunked in season five. Now I know what happened to Ruth!

Our friends Valerie and Bryan from Italy (and from Albuquerque before that) are coming to visit this weekend! I have been trying to prepare them for the actual quantities of mud they are going to encounter.

I have already contacted our “landlord” to see if we can stay later, and we can. But we have not decided yet. I miss Buddy (the cat), but he is being well looked after at home. It would be nice to be here as the days get longer. The only “bad” thing about being here in winter is the short days, but then you get the long cozy evenings.

The weather has been wonderful for over a week. There was a bit of rain last night, but before that our last rain was a week ago Monday in London. I don’t even bother bringing my rain jacket on hikes.

But this changes tomorrow and I am ready for some rain. I am reading a great book: Sebastian Faulks “Engleby” (2007). I am knitting mittens - trying the knitting them flat pattern vs. knitting in the round. And I want to do some writing for “Cotswolder”. All this good weather has been holding me back!! :)

Today we walked from the cottage, down to the bottom of the valley, up to the Minchinhampton Commons, across the commons and into Minch for lunch. The walk only took 1 hour 15 minutes! We had a nice lunch at The Kitchen, a tea shop we loved when we spent a week in Minch a couple of years ago.

Minchinhampton High Street

Big first step: I pinned some of our “we are looking for a house to let” cards on the bulletin board in The Kitchen. Now I have to remember to keep my cell phone on.

On the way home we went via the village of Box. This is on the south facing slope just down from the Minch Commons. It is a small lovely village between Minch and Nailsworth. We stopped in Nailsworth for a few things - bread from Hobbs Bakery, a newspaper, post office to mail a letter (oh, and an order of chips from the Fish and Chips place which we ate sitting on a bench in the little town center park) - then walked home on the Cycle Path that goes along the valley floor.

There is a beautiful big horse in the field beside the footpath we take up the hill from the Cycle Path out our lane. By the end of our afternoon out, we could feel the weather changing. It was getting colder and the sky was clouding over.

Since Tuesday, our sunny day in London, the weather has been very good. Today it was like spring! If the weather was not as good, I would be getting more Cotswolder pages written, more posts to this blog, more photos uploaded. Instead we are having lazy mornings, then lovely afternoon hikes.

Today everyone was out enjoying the countryside. We drove to Nympsfield, just a few miles away, and did a three hour hike through woods, along valleys, to two prehistoric burial grounds, and along part of the “Cotswold Way”, a long distance hiking path (from Uley Bury to Nympsfield Long Barrow). There were many people out on the trails and we came to a large park at a view point full of families playing with kids and dogs. Gliders and para-gliders were flying overhead. It felt like a summer day.

View on hike from Nympsfield to Uley Bury.

We have been in our Nailsworth holiday cottage for three weeks. Another week and we are at the halfway point. This week we went into London, the big smoke, for an overnight trip. A vacation within a vacation, or, another way to look at it, paying for three beds but sleeping in one (our home in Santa Fe, our vacation rental in the Cotswolds, the hotel in London). :)

On Monday morning we took the train to London from Oxford. From Paddington Station we took the underground one stop to the hotel. We stayed at Vancouver Studios, highly recommended by moderator Maureen on the message board. The hotel location is good and our room was really nice.

The weather on Monday was foul. We were caught in a downpour on the way to the hotel. After checking in, we hopped back on the tube and went to Westminster. The rain had stopped and we crossed over the River Thames to walk along and see the view back of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, but what we were really looking for were scene locations from the British TV show “Spooks” (released as MI-5 in North America).

Sitting on a bench looking towards the Thames and the Houses of Parliament.

In seasons one and two, the Spooks characters frequently had meetings on the benches across from the Houses of Parliament.

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Today was sunny. And today, at noon, the sun was on our cottage for about 30 minutes. The days are getting longer too. When we arrived at the beginning of January, it was pitch black by 5pm. Now we get an extra 30 minutes of daytime.

January 24, the sun makes it to our hillside.

The holiday cottage that we are in (Eastview Cottage) is on the outskirts of Nailsworth. The small town of Nailsworth is in a river valley, with the “downtown” area in the valley and most of the residential area on the western slope. Across the valley on the eastern slope are smaller villages: Watledge, Pinfarthings, Theescombe, Amberley. We look across at them; they look at us. Today we walked across the valley to Amberley and had a good look around (easy 40 minute walk - downhill, then uphill).

These villages are high up on the hillside, just below the beautiful Minchinhampton Commons. From Amberley, it is a short walk on a footpath to the commons. We saw a lot of people out walking, many with dogs. There is also a golf course up there, but it is not your typical manicured course and instead is very wild looking. You hardly notice that it is a golf course. I am not a fan of golf courses because of all the water and chemicals it takes to keep them going, but if they were all like this one, I would not dislike them as much. The golfers stop hitting balls when there are walkers nearby, but I am not sure if they are being polite or if we have the right of way.

Our cottage is in Windsoredge, a village on a steep northern facing slope at the edge of Nailsworth. We look out towards beautiful countryside: Bown Hill and Woodchester Park in the valley that we face and across the Nailsworth valley to Amberley. We are away from the slightly builtup area of Nailsworth. Our area is all older cottages and houses; there is a modern new development at the top of our hill, but we do not see it.

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On Friday there was heavy rain and wind. We stayed in most of the day, just dashing out for a few minutes to pickup a few things at the shops in Nailsworth. Jonathan (SlowTravel moderator) and his wife Philippa came for dinner Friday night. You don’t expect to have dinner guests when you are traveling, so this was even more fun than usual. The cottage has a good oven and the locally grown vegetables that we get at the Stroud Farmer’s Market are great, so we made roasted vegetables.

On Saturday it was still very overcast, but only drizzling. We went into Stroud for the market (met Jonathan and Philippa for coffee) then out for a short neighborhood walk in the afternoon. It is Sunday morning now and still overcast with the wind blowing. It is not raining, but probably will off and on today. I think we will bundle up this afternoon and do a good walk.

Emails from Santa Fe tell me they are having a very cold January with temperatures well below freezing during the daytime. Our housesitter Ann emailed me some photos of the yard (still snow in it) and the cat (Buddy!) and the nice fires they are making.

It is not that cold here. The water resistant winter coats I got us from Lands End for this trip are working out well, and are even too warm sometimes. The cottage we rented is older and built from stone. It has a good heating system and keeps very warm.

View from our cottage on a bad weather day. January 2008.

We had a trip to the Cotswolds booked for last July/August, but we had to cancel a few days before because of the flooding. They had a wetter than usual summer and then had a very heavy rainfall on Friday July 20 which caused severe flooding in Tewkesbury, Gloucester and riverside places in the Cotswolds. The water purification plant in Gloucester was flooded and much of Gloucestershire was without water for two to three weeks. The cottage we had booked had its water turned off, so we stayed in Switzerland.

The Guardian, Monday July 23 2007, County by county: the areas worst hit by flooding - “Twelve centimetres fell in the county (Oxfordshire) on Friday (July 20) - the largest daily rainfall since records began for the area in 1968.” Twelve centimetres is about five inches, that is a lot of rain.

We decided to spend this winter in the Cotswolds, knowing we would hit bad weather. I figured it is better to go at a time when you know it will be bad so you can be pleasantly surprised if you get any good weather, than to go at a time when it should be good and then have it be bad. It made sense at the time.

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On Friday we did the one hour drive to Oxford to take the train into London for a SlowTrav GTG. We could have taken the train from Stroud, just ten minutes away, but we wanted to try Oxford because there are more trains and from the website it looked like we could take express trains back even during rush hour. (I will write more about trains later - the system of prices is vastly confusing.) Also the fare is half the price, taking it from the totally ridiculous, to just ridiculous.

Sometimes I think I am the worst traveler in the world. The morning drive went well, but it was raining most of the time. We found the station, found the long term parking, managed to pay, bought our tickets, then got on a slow local train instead of the express. It only took an hour longer, but we had planned to meet a friend on the express train. After spending about five hours online, I thought I had the schedules memorized, but nothing ever mentioned a local train to London leaving just a few minutes before the express. (Again, more about this later. This post was supposed to be about snow, not me moaning about trains.)

Our SlowTrav GTG in London was lovely. We all met at The George an historic pub just south of London Bridge. Nine of us had lunch and talked travel and Slow Travel for a couple of hours.

The George, pub in England. January 2008.

The George Inn Yard, 77 Borough High Street, Southwark, London SE1 1NH. This is the last galleried inn in London. Located just south of London Bridge and the River Thames (underground station London Bridge on the Jubilee line) near the Borough Market. It was built in the 17th century and was mentioned by Charles Dickens in “Little Dorrit”. It is now owned by the National Trust, but operates as a pub.

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On January 1 a new three part adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” by Andrew Davies started on BBC (part two on Sunday January 6, part three on Sunday January 13). We arrived the day after episode one was broadcast, but caught it at the hotel because their TV system has an “On Demand” type feature where you can watch recently broadcast programs. (Big thanks to Clive who picked us up at the airport for telling us about the series!) The BBC website lets you view episodes for one week after they broadcast ( BBC iPlayer ) but only if your ISP is in the United Kingdom (there may be ways around this). The third and final episode broadcasts on Sunday. This is a very good adaptation of one of my favorite novels.

The Jane Austen Society site says the DVD of this series will be available on March 1, 2008 in North America, but I do not find it listed on Amazon.

See the BBC website ( BBC Sense and Sensibility ) for video clips and more information.

Rent the Dashwood’s Cottage!

The Devon cottage where most of the story action takes place is a holiday cottage (vacation rental) - Blackpool Mill, a 15th century cottage in north Devon, on the Hartland Abbey Estate.

Okay, this is not a cottage where Jane Austen stayed, but it is the next best thing. And the cottage was there during Jane Austen’s time.

The four bedroom cottage stands alone beside the sea and has been rented as a holiday cottage for over 50 years. It is rustic - a “bring your own sheets and towels” type of rental. From their brochure: “Mains electricity for the first time in 2007! … We have just installed central heating and a dishwasher so things are really looking up!!”

Hartland Abbey is in north Devon, on the Atlantic coast between Exmoor and Cornwall, just west of the town of Bideford.

Weekly rental prices are not listed on the brochure, but the Guardian article I read listed them. “Bookings have jumped since its debut on New Year’s Day, but this has always been a top spot for those with £1,100 to spend on a week in high season (not bad if you fill all eight beds, and it comes down to £450 from late October to mid-March).”

The Guardian, January 7 2008, “Austen drums up custom for a scenic holiday home“.

BBC News, January 3 2008, “Austen boost for holiday cottage” .

Telegraph, January 3 2008, “Sense and Sensibility cottage to be holiday hit“.

The main website for Hartland Abbey was not working this morning, maybe because of increased traffic since all the media mentions, but it is working now. From the BBC article: “The screening of the first episode of the drama on New Year’s Day led to a surge of interest. ‘The phone has been ringing since the first programme went out,’ said Sir Hugh Stucley, who owns Blackpool Mill.”

This cottage would be a perfect get-away. Can’t you just picture yourself standing in front of the cottage looking out over the sea, expecting that cad Willoughby to come down the road at any minute? (The menfolk can walk along the hillside looking for a Marianne to rescue.)