Roger Butler finds dazzling sun and snow
DO YOU REMEMBER Call My Bluff? This was a TV programme where panellists had to correctly match one of three ambiguous meanings to an unfamiliar or littleknown word. Ture, an old term from the Cotswold Hills, might have been a suitable test: ‘Is this an ancient Lithuanian currency, a jigsaw piece with a least one straight side or an unusual walled enclosure for sheep and cattle which is only found on steep hillsides in deepest Gloucestershire?’
Thirty years ago, no more than a dozen local people still used the word and the remaining tures were slowly sinking back into the landscape. Two or three have now been restored and these ingenious peninsulas
enabled thirsty livestock, up on the better grassland above the spring line, to wander downhill for a drink. The longest ture dropped more than 100 metres to meet the marshy pools at the head of a valley east of Stanway, and its elongated form was now clearly visible against the dazzling white snow.
Earlier in the week, window panes had rattled like kettle drums as feathery flakes drifted on winds as sharp as a silver dagger. Today, the sun hurt my eyes and a calm blue sky lingered over the mist-wrapped Vale of Evesham. Broadway Tower resembled a rocket all ready for take-off whilst the mountains above distant Hayon-Wye seemed to be coated in layers of shiny aluminium.
The Cotswold Way tumbled into the cafés and up-market shops at Broadway, where Scandinavian Aesthetic Skincare and Ozone Coffee Roasters faced each other across what was once a rattling coach road to London. It’s an attractive honeypot but I was soon amidst silent beech trees and wispy catkins as the path to Buckland skirted the west side of Burhill.
Snow was packed in holloway tracks and the broad plateau was a table decorated in white icing. A steep path plunged into Stanton where heavy wooden doors and huge stone mullions really did look several hundred years old. A manor house with thickly-mossed outbuildings was dated 1618 and stumpy pollards were giant fists as they punched up through the ragged hedges at the foot of the escarpment. Craggy oaks creaked below Shenberrow Hill.
A tiny barn and a witch-like tree could have been a stage set for Shakespeare, whilst medieval ridge and furrow created distinct shadows in the fields below the hills. Some of the wave-like troughs were almost a metre deep and each patch of pasture contained at least thirty of these parallel patterns. I did a quick calculation: if one field was the rough equivalent of climbing, say, twenty metres, then ten fields would be…um, 200 metres. And that means a walk in this part of the world might only need to cross fifty or sixty carefully chosen fields to cumulatively ascend the height of a Munro! And all without having to even break sweat.
Dusk was in the air as I stood beneath the Jacobean arch at Stanway House and climbed through the dark trees in Lidcombe Wood. The regular clockwork thump of a hydraulic ram echoed into the stillness as a rich rosy glow caught the top branches. Ahead, a spruce tree glowed as bright as a bonfire and the snow-splattered path beyond the wood was ablaze with the setting sun. In summer lavender is grown up here but as the winter’s afternoon drew to a close, Snowshill seemed an appropriate place to be.