The Cotswold Way really is a fantastic National Trail. Beautiful countryside, varied surroundings, nice footpaths (in the main…), excellent signposting, some hard bits, some cruisy bits, some history to learn, and some really big and fantastic views.
The Cotswold Way
Taking hikers the length of the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), starting in Chipping Campden in the north and stretching down to Bath in the South, this trail follows the western edge of the Cotswold hills. It is officially 102-miles long (we walked 108), and while it has only been a designated National Trail since May 2007, the Cotswold Way has existed as a waymarked and popular long-distance walk for over 50 years.
Hiking the Cotswold Way went on my bucket list at the point we decided to move to this part of the country, something over five years ago. My now-local National Trail, I can see the Cotswold escarpment from my home and office windows, know parts of it incredibly well, and felt it only right I should make an effort to hike the whole thing. A good challenge and perfect way to better get to know my local patch.
The trail passes through picturesque villages made from Cotswold Stone, and exudes historical significance – Roman heritage, Neolithic burial chambers, castles and stately homes, hundreds of churches, and even a massive battleground. The path along (and up and down) the Cotswold escarpment offers big views to the west towards and beyond the River Severn and the Malvern Hills. A delightful trail.
Cotswold Way Adventure Journal Series
Much as I did for the UK Coast to Coast, in this series of posts I want to share what life was like hiking the Cotswold Way. This is my journal of the trail – a rambling yarn about what it was like to go on this long-distance hike. It may well be useful to those considering hiking the Cotswold Way themselves, but in the main I hope you enjoy reading the story of my hike, a day at a time.
In this day zero post, I will be talking about the plans we made to hike the route, including all-important physical and mental preparations, as well as some of my adventure worries. You already know I’ve completed the hike, so this isn’t a post full of suspense, but I want to take you back to the beginning, so you have an idea of my frame of mind when I stepped onto the trail at Chipping Campden.
Who and When
I did this hike with my friend Fiona (of Red Pike in winter fame), who was having something of a rematch with the Cotswold Way after needing to bail on her first attempt a couple of years ago due to injury. She used to live around the corner from me, also in the shadow of the imposing Cotswold escarpment, and saw the trail as an opportunity to see her local area a bit differently.
She knew I wanted to do it and I knew she wanted another go… so one day, when someone I watch on YouTube posted a video about the Cotswold Way, I sent it to her. Decision made. It was such a joy to be out on the trail with Fiona – a week off work for both of us, taking part in a shared hobby, stepping our way south.
We hiked the Cotswold Way southbound in the last week of April 2023. Spring was late coming this year, which meant our hike was perfectly timed to see the colours of spring show themselves. We had wild garlic in some woodlands we walked through, and bluebells in others – along with bright yellow gorse on the hilltops, and blossom still hanging around in the villages. It was a beautiful looking and smelling scene.
The Weather
Weather wise, we were incredibly fortunate if I’m being stoic about it. Four out of six days were completely dry during walking hours (the hours that count), an absolute result, really. We had heavy vertical rain on the third day, and then the final section into Bath was a bit of a washout. My waterproof jacket wetted through on both those days, which gives you an idea of the persistence of the rain. I’m still calling it a weather-win, though, it could have been much worse.
Joining the Dots
The reason I wanted to walk the Cotswold Way, was to join the dots between places I already knew, to see where the path goes in-between the views I already have secured in my mind. There are parts of this route I know incredibly well, particularly the parts found up and around Cleeve Hill. I visit the hill – my local hill – at least once a month, and that’s on a sparse month!
There are other parts of the trail I have hiked once or twice, including Dover’s Hill, Broadway, Stanton and Stanway, Winchcombe, Leckhampton Hill, Crickley Hill, Stinchcombe Hill, and North Nibley. Some of it I hiked when I did my walk around Cheltenham, other sections I’ve seen when on circular walks from books such as Cicerone’s Walking in The Cotswolds and AA’s 50 Walks in The Cotswolds, both of which I was gifted when I left Lincolnshire.
I highly recommend walking your local National Trail if you get the chance, it will help you see where you live in a much more in-depth way. You’ll be surprised at the history, geology, and other features you’ll come across. But even if the Cotswold Way isn’t your local trail, I would highly recommend it as a great week-long hiking option for you. Hopefully, by the end of this adventure journal series, you’ll understand why I say that.
Planning Ahead
It’s no secret that I am a planner. I like to know what to expect, what to look out for, and understand a bit about what an adventure might feel like before I head out of my front door. I know for some that leaving it all to the hiking gods and allowing for plenty of spontaneity is part of the fun. But while I’m not against a last minute change, and am happy to go with the flow most of the time, I find that plotting and planning and preparing is a positive addition to the adventure excitement.
That, of course, means that a Cotswold Way guidebook was an absolute must, something for me to read and take in during the weeks leading up to the hike, to both help me to plan the logistics and, more importantly, to mentally prepare for the hike.
Cicerone Guidebook
My friends at Cicerone were kind enough to send me a copy of Walking the Cotswold Way, which came with their OS Maps booklet. An incredibly detailed walking guide, which had the route described in both directions, heaps of planning information, notes on sights and places of interest along the way, and to-scale OS Maps.
The Cicerone guide became my Sunday evening reading of choice both when Fiona and I were working out our logistics, and just simply to help me get in the mood for this famous hike. I mean, thanks to having it, I at least knew wasn’t going to fall foul of those ‘surprise ascents’ many Cotswold Way walkers speak of!
This time around, I chose not to carry my guidebook with me on the hike itself. Instead, I printed OS Maps from the desktop app in order to save weight and space in my pack. But my copy of the guidebook is very well read and proved invaluable in getting me fully ready to do this long-distance walk. If you’re planning to hike the Cotswold Way, I would highly recommend a guidebook like this one.
The Logistics
We chose to hike the route in six days. Actually, we were looking at seven for the longest time, but we couldn’t make the overnight accommodation work neatly enough towards the end, and so rather than having two 10-mile days to finish, we decided to go for it and have a really big last day instead. We could rest afterwards, right?!
We walked all six days consecutively, but given the location of my home, we did the first two days as day hikes before heading out on a four-day multi-day hike. Well it was a six-day multi-day hike, but you know what I mean. My husband was a very kind taxi driver for the first two days (thank you, we are so grateful), and then on the morning of the third day we headed south and continued until we reached Bath, overnighting in B&Bs along the route.
While the Cotswold Way does have quite some ascent and descent, we confidently set out with a series of reasonably big days (for normally-a-day-hiker like me). And while my legs definitely ached by the end of the longest days (and my lungs hurt on every single steep ascent, but more on that as my adventure journal continues), it was really quite doable.
The Numbers
I’ll share more about where exactly we stayed and ate in each journal episode as I publish them. But in case you are using this to plan your own Cotswold Way hike, here’s a handy list with some very approximate numbers:
- Day 1, Chipping Campden to Winchcombe, 18.5 miles, 2,300ft elevation, 7 hours hiking.
- Day 2, Winchcombe to Leckhampton Hill, 16.5 miles, 2,800ft elevation, 7 hours hiking.
- Day 3, Leckhampton Hill to Painswick, 13 miles, 2,200ft elevation, 6 hours hiking.
- Day 4, Painswick to North Nibley, 22 miles, 3,500ft elevation, 9 hours hiking.
- Day 5, North Nibley to Old Sodbury, 17 miles, 2,500ft elevation, 7 hours hiking.
- Day 6, Old Sodbury to Bath, 21 miles, 2,000ft elevation, 7 hours 30 hiking.
As you can see, we walked 108-miles on this 102-mile National Trail… You should always add a few when hiking a National Trail, the dots never quite join up exactly. The six extra miles we walked were combination of coming slightly off the official route for accommodation and lunch stops, walking right up to trig pillars, to read information boards, and to get a better view from the edge of the hill.
Thankfully our total doesn’t include any miles hiked by mistake. Phew! The Cotswold Way National Trail signage is really quite superb, with acorn logos on posts, pillars, trees and other things at suitably small intervals all the way along, meaning the route was easy to follow from top to bottom (except through Dursley… more of that another day).
Day Zero Preparations
One of the real benefits of hiking my local National Trail was I didn’t need a travel day to get to the starting point. I really am quite jealous of people who live in the Lake District or Scotland or similar who have the big trails and hiking routes on their doorstep all the time – but on this occasion I was very pleased to be a local here on the edge of the Cotswolds. It felt so good to start this adventure from home, it’s so relaxing!
I chose to still book the day off work before I started walking, though, mainly because it had been an incredibly busy few weeks leading up to the hike. I needed a bit of time and space to get everything in order, and so I spent my Friday getting some of my usual weekly chores done, getting the spare room ready for Fiona to help her feel as at home as possible, and of course, the all-important packing…
Packing Two Bags
Packing for the Cotswold Way was way harder than packing for the UK Coast to Coast hike. Somehow, needing much less stuff, made it far less than fun. I thought about it far too much, and it became the most stressful bit of my day zero preparations. I know why; it was because this time I had to carry my own gear – no baggage transfer company doing the heavy lifting for me. And with big miles to hike every day, I was keen to keep things manageable.
Okay, let me qualify that. As the first two days were day hikes, that was easy. I pack for day hikes all the time; I can pack my day pack with my eyes closed. I had my wonderfully bright orange Osprey Tempest 24l sorted with all my usual one-day-out paraphernalia in just a few minutes. You know, waterproofs, first aid kit, PACMAT patch (buy one…), spare socks, little battery pack and cable, wallet, snacks, toilet kit, water bottles, maps. Simple.
A Bigger Pack
But my 24l bag wasn’t going to work for the rest of the hike. While it’s a fantastic pack for one day, I needed to carry extra clothes, some kind of wash kit, maybe a pair of shoes, and a lot more snacks, for the four-day portion of the trail. That meant my day zero preparations included packing two bags.
After the two day hikes I swapped to my slightly larger Osprey Tempest 40l. A bag I know well, it is certainly tried and tested, but it would have been very easy to use all the available space for things I probably wouldn’t need, and to make it very heavy and cumbersome to carry. A 30l pack would have been fine, but I don’t own one of those. Honestly, that pack is like a Tardis, and given that I really don’t own any proper lightweight gear, I had to be incredibly mindful of how it would feel on my back – especially on those two 20+ mile days. Cue all the stress.
I don’t know if you really want or need a full packing list for my Cotswold Way hike – maybe you can tell me in the comments. I know I find them really interesting to read, and I’m very happy to divulge the details of what I decided I couldn’t leave behind on this one if you’d like me to.
Adventure Worries
It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t head into an adventure a bit anxious. I head into everything a bit anxious, which is exhausting really, but there we are. The likely reason is that I end up putting so much pressure on adventures like this – and in turn, the reason for that, is how much a week-long hiking trip like this costs this normal-40-something-year-old; the annual leave used, money spent on overnight accommodation and other things, and the physical and mental energy expended. I know it’s all about attitude, but it’s hard not to let the niggling doubts and anxieties infiltrate the preparations, thus getting in the way of pure excitement for the adventure.
My primary worries for the Cotswold Way can be easily categorised in two easy ways – weather and fitness. The first – the fact that the forecast looked quite terrible, with heavy rain and strong winds moving through the areas we’d be hiking in right from the start – I could do nothing about in reality. Well, I could a bit. I made sure I had my best waterproof jacket packed, that my boots were freshly waxed, and that I purchased a new pair of waterproof over trousers (my old ones no longer fit).
As mentioned above, we ended up being incredibly fortunate despite that awful forecast; the promised heavy rain on the first two days waited until we’d finished hiking, the first of two very rainy days was one we spent mostly in woodland which helped protect us a little, and the day we had the biggest miles to hike was utterly glorious – the perfect spring day.
Fitness and the Cotswold Way
The second worry I mentioned was my fitness. And that is something I always worry about – not just in the run up to a long-distance hike. Despite using the couch to 5k programme to up my hiking fitness, I know I could have put in so much more effort to get hiking fit for the Cotswold Way.
The most I’d walked in recent weeks was 14-miles, and I’d not done two consecutive days hiking for several months. In my head I say this is simply part of leading a busy normal life, but I also know that I could so easily have incorporated more exercise and hiking into my weekly routine, and I didn’t do that. I can be an incredibly lazy outdoorsy woman at times. Actually, I would say that resting-outdoors-women is my default!
No Hilly Surprises
But still, at least I knew anaemia wasn’t going to play a role, that is now completely under control (I hope…), so in comparison to the Coast to Coast hike this was going to be a breeze! Also, while there are significant hills to hike on the Cotswold Way, I also knew the terrain well, and the undulating nature of the hike didn’t scare me. While I was worried that my legs and lungs were going to have a hard time doing it, I knew there was nothing in the route I couldn’t manage – I would just have to take it slowly, with panting breaks where necessary, and all would be well.
Please tell me I’m not the only one here. You know I completed the Cotswold Way and did so without any fitness-related issues, so this isn’t me suggesting it would be too hard for me. But that constant (and very annoying) worry that I’m not fit enough to do the things I want to do – while simultaneously not really doing enough to counter that argument in my head – can’t be good for me. A topic for future self-development, and a blog series to keep me accountable, maybe.
Final Preparations
As for the rest of day zero, once I’d wrangled with my bags to the point where I couldn’t make any more sensible decisions, I did a top up shop for all the hiking-friendly food, cooked beef stew and dumplings for dinner, made my packed lunch for the first day, and thumbed through the guidebook one last time.
Fiona arrived in the early evening, armed with baked goods (thanks Fiona!), and over dinner and afterwards we got ourselves organised, compared packing worries, and made our final preparations. It was reassuring in some ways to hear Fiona’s worries were similar to mine, plus that niggling memory that the Cotswold Way beat her last time, and we agreed to help keep each other keep positive.
Ultimately, we were both here for one thing – to meander our way along the Cotswold Way, to enjoy the trail in a leisurely way, to drink plenty of tea, and to complete something that would satisfy our craving for hiking adventures. And without providing any spoilers, we managed all those thing without any issues!
The Freedom of Hiking
You’ll see as I share each day in my Cotswold Way adventure journal over the coming weeks that I absolutely loved being out on this trail. It really is a stunner, a route I would highly recommend to those looking to take on a long-distance hike for the first or hundredth time. If you are using these posts to help inspire and plan your own Cotswold Way hike, then I hope you find them motivating and useful.
One thing I want to end on in this day zero post, is how there is something so freeing about having no responsibilities other than walking for a week. Get up, get dressed, walk, stop for the views and snacks as the mood takes you, shower, eat a hearty dinner, sleep, and repeat. It really is one of my favourite things to do, not just for the views and the accomplishment, but also for the routine of life spent walking.
This turned out to be a very long adventure journal post considering I hadn’t even started walking the Cotswold Way at this point. I’ll repeat something I said earlier – taking time to plan and prepare really helps fuel the adventure excitement. I’ll be back soon with day one…
Ann
Well done. Looking forward to part 2
Kim
My partner and I want to hike the Cotswold Way, so I look forward to reading your day by day posts. A packing list and accommodation suggestions would be helpful too.
Splodz
Oh fantastic, I hope the series helps your planning!