May 15 – we left our charming Crown & Trumpet hotel around 8:30 in the morning. Apparently, there were no takers for an early breakfast this morning, as there was no staff at the Inn and we needed to use the skeleton key for the front door to let ourselves out.
We found it curious that most places serving breakfast in town didn’t open until 10 am, but a walk through the downtown street found the Broadway Deli open and had a bite before hitting the road.
First stop for the day was the Broadway Tower. Built in 1798-99, it was known as the”Brown’s Folly” atop the second tallest point in the Cotswolds. Throughout its history, it’s been a retreat for artists, a printing press, a lookout during both World Wars and has a nuclear bomb shelter constructed beneath. Since the 1980s, it has been privately owned by a family that know the only way to maintain the landmark is to charge admission and have it open to the public.
The view from the top was stunning. You can see parts of 16 different counties from the Tower top. We enjoyed walking throughout the 200 acre grounds and watching the resident herd of red deer as well.
After our Tower visit, we headed to the town of Winchcombe, which Pam declared had the narrowest streets she had ever driven on. If you encountered oncoming traffic, one party would need to yield and pull onto the curb to make room.
We found a long term parking area and grabbed our rucksacks. Our destination was Belas Knap, a 5,500 year old Neolithic burial site atop Cleeve Hill – the highest point in the Cotswolds (1080 feet). The trek took us through several pastures, some of which were populated with sheep and their very young lambs. You definitely had to watch your step to avoid the slippery sheep dung on the very steep slope.
The burial site was in a “long barrow” which was nearly 200 feet long and had several different burial chamber entrances. These included one that was the most obvious and most ornate, but what was actually a false entry to confuse and dissuade potential grave robbers.
Our descent was more challenging than the climb, as the steep slope jammed our toes into our hiking shoes. When we finally got back to the car, I quickly shed my shoes in favor of some slides to give my poor toes some respite.
Since reaching the Cotswolds, we have mostly been driving on secondary rural roads, but our path to our next destination of Birdlip took us into some more modern areas and we got to fight bumper-to-bumper traffic on our brief foray outside of the Cotswolds.. We were grateful to pull into the car park of the Royal George hotel and made our first stop be the lobby pub to help calm our nerves.
We settled into our room upstairs and Pam took a hot bath to help relax muscles from the strenuous hike and nerve-wracking drive. We then went down to the dining room where we joined a former work colleague of mine, Steve Cook, and his wife and son. Steve and Madeline had come to England at tail end of son, Oakley’s semester studying at Bristol University. Oakley had just finished his last final exam that afternoon and we were able to help him celebrate the end of his semester abroad. It was great being able to rendezvous with friends during our trip.
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