It’s not a Bard idea to start planning your next excursion
If you happen to live on the Shakespeare Way, you’re lucky says NIGEL HEATH. If you’re locked down elsewhere, then plan a walk once the covid crisis is over
MANY people know the name of Naseby, site of the famous English Civil War battle between Charles I’s cavaliers and Oliver Cromwell’s new model army.
But the Northamptonshire village has another claim to fame that you might not know of.
The River Avon rises here, and that makes it the start of Shakespeare’s Avon Way, an 88-mile national trail meandering into neighbouring Warwickshire and Worcestershire before reaching its confluence with the River Severn at Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire.
Before coronavirus closed down the country, my walking companion Peter Gibbs and I completed the walk in six and a half days, enjoying adventures along the way including picnicking by accident in a private garden and meeting a young Polish kick boxing champion.
If you’re fortunate enough to live along the route, chances are you’ll be out taking your daily exercise in splendid surroundings. But for those of us in lockdown, it’s time to start making plans for hitting the Great Outdoors once restrictions are finally lifted.
Setting out from the village’s Lion War Memorial, we soon branched off into rolling, crop-filled, open country and made our first footbridge crossing of the infant Avon. By lunchtime we’d entered St Andrews Churchyard in the hamlet of Clay Cotton where, because there were no seats, we picnicked on the grass.
Peter was munching a sandwich when he read in our guidebook that this is, in fact, a redundant church and now a private house. At that very moment the owner appeared to confirm that we were indeed sitting on his lawn!
But he was good-natured about it, explaining that the 12th century church had fallen into ruin before being restored by a local builder.
We’d walked under overcast skies all morning but by mid-afternoon it was sweltering so we popped into The Bull in Clifton-upon-Dunsmore for a refresher.
Revived, we strolled down into a wooded valley to join the Oxford Canal and followed it into Rugby for our overnight stay.
Back on the canal, we came across a pair of swans and their cygnets around a pub sandwich board as if studying the menu.
By the time we were lunching in a pub garden at Bretford, we’d crossed the landscape on a series of well-marked paths without a soul in sight. Quite prophetic, in hindsight.
Now, we walked on to Wolston, via a wonderful brick arched Victorian railway tunnel under the Coventry to Rugby line, and soon linked up with the Coventry and Centenary Ways which we followed to Ryton-on-Dunsmore, and by late afternoon we’d reached Bubbenhall, from whence a taxi took us to a local hotel for the night.
Some miles beyond the village the following morning, we came upon some ugly metal fences, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
All was revealed by dog walkers Gill and Geoff Wyatt and Kate Bailey with her Labrador Charlie, who explained that this was the route of the controversial HS2 rail line and that half their South Cubbington bluebell wood was to be destroyed to make way for it.
The heavens opened as we followed the wooded River Leam into Leamington and then on to the famous castle-dominated town of Warwick, where we spent the night.
The way out of town led along the Grand Union Canal and we’d not gone far when we met retired window fitter Paul White. He’d been living on his narrowboat for the past six years and loved his roving life. Strangely, we had something in common in that we were both called ‘Pops’ by our grandchildren!
Leaving the canal beyond the spectacular Hatton Flight of locks, we soon came to Hampton-on-the Hill where another surprise was in store, for on opening the parish magazine in the Church of St Charles Borremeo, Peter spotted a picture of the former Royal Pier Hotel in his home town of Clevedon on the Bristol Channel, where I also spent my childhood.
Apparently Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien was married in a sister church in Warwick but spent his honeymoon in our seaside town.
Now followed quite a difficult section of the walk up hill and down dale along a series of heavily overgrown paths, the way being difficult to follow in places.
I’d rolled up my trekking trouser legs as the morning heated up but was now being attacked by prickly wheat stalks and stinging nettles as we trudged up the side of a huge field alive with tiny butterflies and buzzing with insects.
Emerging onto a quiet country lane, we walked into Hampton Lucy where refreshing pints of lime and soda were downed at The Boar’s Head before making our way back to the River Avon.
Now, high on a hill we spotted The Welcome Monument, a spectacular obelisk erected by a local family of merchants, and enjoyed our final flask cuppa there before moving on to find Shakespeare’s house in busy and tourist bustling Stratford-uponAvon.
After over-nighting, we donned full waterproofs to follow the nine-mile Avon River Walk to Bidford-on-Avon. Here, on crossing the centuries-old bridge, we spotted a sandwich board for Ingrid
Rushton’s café and were drawn to it like bedraggled bees to a sheltering honeypot.
“I decided our village needed a café so I took over a former hairdresser’s and opened in April and it’s proving a great success,” said Ingrid, who’d moved away from the village only to return a couple of years ago.
It had stopped raining as we walked through water meadows and across a landscape now dominated by huge glass houses in the famously fertile Vale of Evesham.
And here in this picturesque riverside town, another surprise was in store after we’d checked into a hotel – we were served at the bar by former Polish world champion kickboxer Angelika Jarecka, who’d moved to Evesham to be close to a member of her family.
You never know who you’re going to meet when you set out on a walk.
The bells of Fladbury Church rang out across the vale the following morning, beckoning us to our coffee stop on the village green.
We’d been on the trail early, along a series of tracks across pasture land with our first distant views of the Malvern Hills beyond journey’s end in Tewkesbury.
After Fladbury, we reached the curiously named village of Wyre Piddle before strolling into the lovely riverside town of Pershore for lunch.
There was no way we’d complete the 12 miles into Tewkesbury so we walked on to picturesque Great Comberton, where locals look after the quay and use their telephone box as a lending library.
Here, we taxied back to Pershore for our overnight stay and then out again to resume the walk with the last three miles into Tewkesbury through riverside water meadows under clear blue skies, and an absolute delight.
Memories of the walk are sustaining our wanderlust during these dark days of pandemic but as soon as it is safe to venture out again, we’ll be dusting off our walking boots, and who knows? Maybe we’ll meet you along the way.