Tread lightly as the Cotswolds opens for walks

Britain’s rural heartland is welcoming visitors – but be respectful, urges local Harriet O’Brien

The Cotswolds is looking particularly idyllic right now. The 800 square miles of this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty have not only benefited from greatly reduced traffic over the last six weeks, but its famously pretty honey-stone villages are more appealing than ever thanks to intensive lockdown gardening by local residents.

Within easy striking distance of London to the east, Bristol to the south-west and Birmingham to the north, the Cotswolds usually receives at least 30million visitors a year, and servicing this is a large tourist industry currently on hold. Boris Johnson’s Sunday announcement that, from this Wednesday, people could drive to enjoy our open spaces is likely to result in a rapid surge of visitors to the area – inevitably bringing a wave of challenges in its wake.

The message has not been met with universal approval here, and some locals on social media seem determined to keep the door to the Cotswolds firmly closed. Furthermore, popular tourist destinations across the UK have told day-trippers, in no uncertain terms, to keep away.

But tourism bigwigs here, while urging caution, are striking a far more embracing tone. “Our key message is that everyone is welcome to enjoy the Cotswolds,” said Andy Parsons, chief executive of the Cotswolds Conservation Board, the umbrella organisation that runs the Cotswolds AONB, “but we ask them to consider others, especially landowners and farmers.”

About 80 per cent of the Cotswolds is farmland and Parsons urges visitors to think about how their actions will impact local agriculture and wildlife that, with little human intervention, has become more bold over the last few weeks. With public transport discouraged, most people will be driving to the area and there is concern about visitors parking on narrow country lanes or by the gates to fields.

“The outdoors is not free from virus risk,” added Parsons. “Visitors need to think about the gates and other surfaces they touch and follow good hand hygiene.” He is also apprehensive of well-known beauty spots becoming crowded – the villages of Bourton-onthe-Water, and Upper and Lower Slaughter, for example. Instead, they are pushing people to spots that are more off the beaten track. “Visitors can find out about quieter places from the AONB website,” he said.

The region is laced with footpaths, not least the 102-mile Cotswold Way from Chipping Campden to Bath.

Under normal circumstances the organisation’s team of 350 voluntary wardens runs guided walks and there are plans for a big programme of these to return later in the year. In the meantime, Parsons is keen that visitors consult the website for hiking information including a host of self-guided walks. Among the influx, he is hopeful that there will be people who have never visited the countryside before. “That would be such a positive result,” he said.

While businesses reliant on tourism are applauding the first signs of visitors returning, they are stumbling over the lack of clarity in government directives, especially for the holiday cottage rental

LAURIE LEE COUNTRY

Tucked into a landscape of hills and patchwork fields, the Slad Valley is celebrated in Lee’s book

ARE WE NEARLY THERE YET? The Cotswold Way, left, is open to day-trippers but a cottage stay, right, is some way off