Day 25: Cheltenham

Distance: 13.4 miles
Cheese weight: 8 lbs

We're now well into Gloucestershire, our fourth county. Each has its own character, and we've come to appreciate the subtle differences between them. Here's our guide to English counties so far:

Cornwall: steep hills, brown mud
Devon: big hills, red mud
Somerset: mud often mixed with pony poo, and very deep
Gloucestershire: honey coloured, sticky, heavy, slippery mud

One more day and we'll be in our fifth county: Worcestershire. Can't wait to see what it has to offer!



Most of today's walk was a trip down memory lane, revisiting some of the best parts of the Cotswold Way walk we did with our children back in 2006. A highlight was walking out onto the top of Cooper's Hill, which has no relation to Cooper the cat.


That's Cooper the cat. And see here, how it looks like Dawn is about to walk off the end of the earth? That's Cooper's Hill.


Every year for the past two hundred years, somebody tosses an eight pound wheel of Double Gloucester over the brink, and a few dozen maniacs race after the cheese. First one down gets to keep it. There's ambulance crews at the bottom to cart off the injured; one year they took 33 participants to hospital. Here is an article about the event including YouTube videos.

We walked along familiar forest paths, and around every turn it seemed there was a familiar vista that we remembered. It was really great. Some of the animals were familiar, like these sheep. Fortunately, they seemed to be the normal kind of sheep. The ones that just go about their business, eating grass. Not the crazy sheep of Somerset, the ones that we're pretty sure
long for the taste of human flesh.


We also saw animals that were new to us, like these Oreo cows, grazing at the outskirts of the Painswick golf club.


The scariest event today came just after lunch, when we had to cross two A roads that came together at a traffic circle.


Crossing an A road is hard enough. Crossing at a traffic circle, with no lights, is hard too. Combining both into one is a real challenge. You start by looking into the circle, and then looking down the road, and trying to figure out which drivers will be coming your way and attempting to mow you down. It's tough to figure out, since the cars here all drive really fast, on the wrong side of the road, and seem to care less about pedestrians. I mostly just waited for Dawn's yell, "go!"', and then we ran for our lives.

A few miles after our successful crossing, we left the Cotwold Way. We will miss the great signs that direct you along the national trail; now it's back to map reading and, sometimes, getting lost and confused.


Tomorrow we head west, away from the hills of the Cotswolds and into the flat Severn valley. Our luck with the weather continues; should be another partly sunny and cool day - perfect for walking!

Location:Shurdington Rd,Cheltenham,United Kingdom