The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curiosities abound in Cotswolds
“If you ever need reminding how odd the English can be, take a trip to Swinbrook,” urged a British travel blog I read just before leaving for a fall walking tour of the Cotswolds, that glorious unspoiled region in south-central England, bounded roughly by Oxford, Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon.
I’m always up for any reminder of how odd the English can be, so I considered myself lucky that our group’s walks indeed would lead to Swinbrook, which lies on one of the most fascinating of hundreds of public footpaths through the golden limestone villages and sheep pastures that are so evocative of the wool trade that built the region six centuries ago.
The oddities we discovered at Swinbrook, a small village only about 20 miles west of Oxford, are found at its medieval stone church, with its 17th-century effigies of the Fettiplace family lining a wall of the sanctuary. The Fettiplace men, who once ruled large parts of Oxfordshire, lie propped up on their elbows one on top of another, carved in white marble in their knights’ armor, facing visitors in floor-to-ceiling horizontal stacks set in tall marble niches, as if frozen in the midst of Pilates class.
Those Fettiplace knights are odd enough, but after they had been leaning on their elbows for three centuries, the notorious and elite Mitford clan joined them at Swinbrook in the 1920s, after their family fortunes had fallen. Just outside the church door we saw the simple, weathered gravestones of four of the six Mitford daughters, including the famous writer Nancy; Pamela, “the rural Mitford”; Diana, who shocked British society by breaking up two marriages to be with fascist demagogue Sir Oswald Mosley; and the virulently anti-Semitic Unity Mitford, whose friendship (some say more) with Adolf Hitler drove her to attempt suicide in Munich when Britain declared war on Germany.
My husband, Dave, and I were in a group of eight Americans and a British guide on a six-day trip with the San Diego-based Classic Journeys, which specializes in small-group walking tours. The two-mile Windrush Valley Walk to Swinbrook from our base in the town of Burford is one of many named trails found throughout the Cotswolds, whose length, degree of challenge, and twists and turns are detailed in walkingtour guidebooks and online. (The Cotswolds just marked its 50th anniversary as a protected area, known as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, or AONB. There are 3,000 miles of walking routes within that area. The region’s website contains maps and detailed routes, as well as a calendar of guided walks.)
The Windrush Valley walk leads you along the slow Windrush River, across the wooden stiles that get you over fences and past curious cows and sheep, whose deposits present the only real obstacles to a walker. Midway is the tiny, 11th-century St. Oswald’s Church, stranded in a grassy field.
St. Oswald’s is known because it was the church serving a vanished medieval village. Only by walking there can you make out the faint outlines of foundations and streets of the settlement wiped out by the famine of 1315 and then the Great Plague of 1348. Inside, through a creaking, short wooden door (a hand-lettered index card just inside reminds the visitor to shut it to keep out birds) are ancient pews and remnants of medieval wall paintings. A Roman villa’s mosaic from about A.D. 200 was discovered under the floor in a recent excavation, but has been covered for protection.
Though we decided to join a group — and there are many companies, American and British, which offer Cotswolds walking tours of various lengths - it is also possible to do it yourself by choosing one or more villages to stay in and setting out from there with your trail maps. Thirty years ago, NBC News anchor John Chancellor wrote about his love of walking from one Cotswolds village inn to the next, where he would bed down for the night and continue the following morning. He described in colorful detail the stiles and landmarks of one route, which started in Moreton-in-Marsh, ran through Blockley and finished at Chipping Campden. My husband and I used some free time to retrace the Chancellor route to see how it had changed, and found that while he wrote that it was largely unmarked, today the path — like all in the Cotswolds — is clearly signed with fixed wooden Monarch’s Way and Heart of England Way markers at twists and turns, and guidebooks to take you step-by-step.
The beauty of walking is what you see right in front of your nose that you couldn’t catch in a driveby. There were the faint outlines of that disappeared village at the stranded church of St. Oswald’s in the middle of pastures and nowhere near any road. Another day, we came over a rise between fields and could make out on a green hillside the lines that were the remnant of ridge-and-furrow plowing abandoned after the population was decimated in the 14th century and the farming economy transitioned from agriculture to livestock.
And while it lies south of the Cotswolds, our tour included a three-mile walk into Stonehenge, a route that indispensably allows you to see how that monument from 2500 B.C. is just one part of a complex array of other henges and barrows and ancient “avenues” to Stonehenge itself.
Among the more than 50 trails in guidebooks, there are some “bread-and-butter” Cotswolds walking routes, a group of voluntary wardens told me when I sat down with them in Burford. One is that Windrush Valley walk to Swinbrook. Another is the Cotswold Way National Trail, which runs all the way from Chipping
Classic Journeys. 800-2003887. classicjourneys.com/londonstonehengecotswolds Six-night trips offered in May, June, July and September. Starting point is London. Double from $4,695, single $5,490 (excluding airfare).
the Cotswolds and Cornwall — Road Scholar. 877-426-8056. bit.ly/WalkingtheEnglishCountryside Fourteen-night trips, with stops in Cotswolds and Cornwall, offered May to October, starting in London. Double from $4,799 or $5,599, including airfare from Newark. Single add $600.
— Backroads. 800-4622848. backroads.com/trips/WELI/england-hiking-tour Seven trips from June to September. Five nights, meeting in Stratfordupon-Avon. From $4,698, single add $830 (excluding airfare).
Contours Walking Holidays. 011-44-16-2982-1900. contours.co.uk/walking-holidays/cotswold-way.php Unguided walks with bed-and-breakfast lodging, maps and luggage transfers. Various segments of the 102.5-mile Cotswold Way trail, with adventures from four to 13 days. From $485.
HF Holidays. 011-44-20-8732-1250. hfholidays.co.uk Choose between the Cotswolds Discovery Tour (which is three to seven nights, based in Bourton-on-the-Water, for $440 to $1,060) or the Cotswold Way Walking Tour (complete 72 miles of the national trail in six nights from $935).
Walk The Landscape. 011-44-12-9581-1003. walkthelandscape.co.uk Self-guided or guided walks for two to three nights, based in a variety of B&Bs in Cotswolds villages. From $105 per person, per night.
cotswoldsaonb.org.uk Campden in the north down to Bath, a total of 102 miles, and which some group tours walk from end to end in segments over differing lengths of time, from one to two weeks. Cotswolds trail guides lay out both “circular” walks that take you back to your base village or inn, and others where you arrange a pickup or hire one of the services that will forward your bags to a new base.
One day we wound our way to the village of Adlestrop. We stood at a vantage point in its churchyard that overlooks the yellow limestone home where Jane Austen used to visit relatives when it was a parsonage. In the church, a note to visitors says: “A self-proclaimed ‘desperate walker,’ Jane Austen more than likely walked the pleasant lanes from Adlestrop, which she describes in ‘Mansfield Park’ as ‘a retired little village between gently rising hills.’ ” How cool it was to realize that we had just descended the very same.