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South GloucestershireWalk Details: Top details: The Walk: |
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We never intended doing a county top today. Our Mum had been saying for a long time that she wanted to walk the Cotswold Way, and for Christmas we had got her a guide to the path. Unfortunately, partly due to time constraints and partly due to my Dad's reluctance, she had yet to walk any. We decided that, as it was Mother's Day, we would give her a bit of a kick-start. We would have started at the beginning of the trail, outside Bath Abbey. However as Bath was our nearest big city growing up, we had all walked so many times between the free parking in Victoria Park and the Abbey that it seemed a bit pointless to do it again. As we were parking in the park it would also have meant retracing our steps, which is a waste of effort on a long distance path - we had parked another car up at the monument so that we could do a straight-through walk and cover as much path as possible. Victoria Park is always a pleasure - a tranquil spot where you can always find some space to yourself even in this most busy and touristy of cities. There are generally beautiful floral displays, and a lovely arboretum area - it's worth taking time to look around. Being locals and having seen it all before, we parked in the corner of the park closest to where the Cotswold Way left it, pulled on our boots and set off. The trail was very clearly signposted (in fact, in over six miles today we never had to refer to the map once). Initially it lead up through a steep and bijou golf course, the top of which gave good views across the distinctive Bathstone buildings. It then led us through a maze of little alleyways and residential roads, gradually heading downhill all the way (which was annoying, since all the while we could see ahead the steep ridge that we would soon have to ascend!). This sort of urban walking is often fascinating, and this section of the Cotswold Way was no exception; we could peek into fascinating back gardens and peer at the lovely warm-looking Bathstone buildings. Soon we hit the first bit of countryside on the Cotswold Way; it’s just a field behind some houses. It’s not long before you plunge further downhill into the suburb of Weston, and the noise of a busy road. Here a group of teenagers inquired whether we were off hiking. We answered yes, expecting a sarcastic response. Instead we got a polite shout of “good luck” – kids are bought up so much better in the south-west than in the south-east, where Jim and I now live.
Beyond the trig point the path continued to ascend, albeit more gently. First it took us through an exceptionally muddy cow field; whilst I was admiring a recently-born calf I trod in an exceptionally wet patch and shot an unpleasant mixture of cow poo and mud up the inside of my trouser leg. Fortunately we soon left the cow slurry behind and on the approach to Kelston Round Hill the path was actually well surfaced with yellow sandy gravel – this didn’t exactly blend in with the landscape, but did make for easy walking. You could see it stretching off around the base of the hill, but atop the hill was another example of our old friend the trig point. Jim said it couldn’t be a trig point – it looked too tall compared to the people stood around it, and too white. Jim and I took a quick run up the hill to have a look. It turned out that they were short people, and the trig was painted white. From here, 218 metres above sea level, the views were amazing, especially to the west. We could see both Severn bridges, and even the dim outline of the Welsh hills behind.
The path reduced to a mudslide once again as we climbed still further to the aptly named Prospect Stile. We needed a rest after the steep, slippery but mercifully brief ascent, and were glad that a couple of benches had been provided alongside one of those viewing platforms stating distances to nearby landmarks. According to this, on a clear day we’d have – astonishingly – been able to make out Westbury White Horse and the tower on Glastonbury Tor. It was a bit too hazy today, but we could at least make out two county tops we were yet to visit – Niver Hill and Dundry Down. The Cotswold Way now followed the edge of an exceptionally clayey field. Some people had taken this as an excuse to leave the path and walk on the farmer’s young cabbages to keep their boots clean; we stuck to the path and would beg future walkers to do the same rather than alienate the farming community on whose support the walking community is so reliant. To the right of the field were the fences of Bath racecourse, a rather ugly incongruity in the midst of this bare and open plateau. On the left was something rather more fitting; the ditch of an iron age hill fort, looking remarkably like an old canal. We turned left, across the hill fort and away from our end target of the monument. Our Dad was now getting tired, and was worried that we were (albeit briefly) in the wrong direction, and started asking passing walkers which way the monument was – we had to hurry him on. The Cotswold Way did seem to be very popular, at times almost too busy. It was rare that there were no other people in sight; this was partly probably due to it being Mothering Sunday, and partly due to us passing and re-passing the same people. We came across a couple of these “regulars” now, a couple in their 50’s or 60’s. They turned out to be about as professional as walkers come, and made mine and Jim’s achievements look puny on comparison. They’d walked the entire South West Coast Path (and gave us hints to which were the tricky parts), climbed all of the English and Welsh Marilyns, and cycled Lands End to John O’Groats, amongst other things. They said they were members of the Caterpillar Walking Club, which they said had its own website – unfortunately I haven’t been able to track the web address down. They also said that at Prospect Stile we’d just walked over the highest point in Avon. I said I was sure it wasn’t, it was either Dundry Down or Niver Hill (I couldn’t remember which). We left them feeling awed by their walking prowess, but also slightly annoyed that they’d managed to outwalk us in so many respects! From here the path took us on a very muddy track across a golf course – so muddy in fact that we left the track and walked on the grass on the other side of the fence (taking great care of course to keep off of the fairways and greens and out of the way of the golfers). Normally I enjoy walking on golf courses, but this one was less attractive than most and I was tired! I was glad to eventually emerge into grassy fields on the other side. Here the Cotswold Way presented us with one final stunning view – and it was by far the best and most surprising of the day. Going over a slight crest in the field, suddenly a spectacular vista across the Severn valley to the north revealed itself to us. There was also a trig point (this one 235m high and marking a hill called Hanging Hill) set amongst the brambles; Jim the inveterate trig-bagger let out a whoop of joy and rushed forward to make a tricky but eventually successful ascent. Just beyond the trig point was a red metal flag and an information board. This north-facing escarpment was the site of the Battle of Lansdown where, during the English Civil War, parliamentarian troops at the crest of the hill fought off a Royalist attempt to take the city of Bath. Looking down the steep slopes, we felt that the Parliamentarians had a strong ally in the landscape hereabouts – I wouldn’t fancy trying to ascend these slopes normally, let alone under fire and in full battle dress! We followed the red flags along the crest of a hill beneath the fences surrounding a modern radio mast. The path briefly joined the drive to the radio station, and then followed a path through a field parallel to the drive before emerging on the Lansdown road immediately opposite to where the car was parked. It was a curiously anticlimactic end to what had been an excellent and at times dramatic walk. The monument to Sir Bevill Granville (who died in the Battle of Lansdown) was visible a little way off on the other side of the road, but we would leave that to be explored on the next section of the Cotswold Way. When we got home, I was a little worried about the marilyn-baggers’
assertions that Prospect Stile was the highest point in Avon. Given their
huge walking experience I felt that there was a good chance they could
be right. It turned out that our records were correct – the highest
point in Avon was on Niver Hill. Prospect Stile wasn’t the highest
point of anything, but the marilyn-baggers were close to the truth. It
turned out that the drive at the front of the radio mast was the highest
point in the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire, at 237m. We had
completed a county top by accident, although given that there was a radio
mast there perhaps we should have guessed – radio masts have become
a bit of a characteristic of recent county tops! This was a bit of a landmark
county top, in that it meant we could colour in a line of completed counties
all the way across England, from the east coast to the Severn Estuary!
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We
were through Weston in a matter of minutes, and after leaving it via playing
fields, we joined the Cotswold Way proper; the walk through northern Bath,
nice though it is, can be considered merely as a “link” path
so that the Cotswold Way starts at a memorable place at Bath Abbey, rather
than in the middle of nowhere. You’re straight away given a taste
of what is to come with a stiff climb up Penn Hill. Jim and I managed
it fairly easily, but Mum & Dad were already lagging behind a little
– you could tell that Jim & I were now accustomed to hill-climbing!
We waited for them at the first trig point of the day, 121 metres above
sea level. Even at this low level the views were already starting to open
out; we could see right across Bath, and had a good view of Beckford’s
Tower on the next ridge to the east. Given that we would be attaining
nearly twice this height, the views could only get better.
We
rushed back down to the Cotswold Way and ran along it to find Mum &
Dad and boast to them of the view that they’d missed, only to find
that the view from the path on the other side of the hill nearly equalled
that from atop the hill. It wouldn’t be a view for long though –
someone in their infinite wisdom had decided that planting hundreds of
trees here would be a good idea. In years to come this will cause the
loss of the view (hey, but at least we saw it before it went!) and a complete
change of nature for this beautiful open hillside. Why can’t people
just leave things as they are? It was clear, however, that the intention
of the trail designers was to keep to the western escarpment of the Cotswolds,
presumably aiming for the best views possible all the way along.