Day 10, Sunday, September 10th: DIY Hiking in the Cotswolds

Our upstairs bedrooms were cooler than the night before. Early this morning some cloud cover with a temperature of 22 degrees. The expected high will be 27 degrees and there may be some showers during the morning and early afternoon. There was a cow mooing loudly before we went to bed. Maybe it was being abducted by aliens (South Park reference).  ;-)

Generally, it has been pretty quiet in this neighbourhood. There are signs around town of a "Food Festival" between 10 am and 4 pm at the Village Green so we will have to attend at some point. For certain, Lana will not be keen on a long hike/walk today. 

Our options for hiking/walking today are limited as Lana wants to take it easier and a shorter less arduous hike. She decides on a walk from Broadway to Ashton Under Hill. Very quickly we learn that the hike is mostly through residential area and then walking beside a main road! Dangerous with the traffic when there is no sidewalk especially. For a while there are sidewalks and then it is simply the main road with some grass on the side. After about 4 kms Lana finds a 'walking/bridal path' and we turn left into the farmers fields.

We have a general idea of where our final destination is relative to where we are now which is a little lost. We are between farmers fields on a real trail and it comes to a T intersection and we turn right and it is the correct choice. We know we are in the right direction but not sure where this walking route takes us?

Garmin photo of our Sunday walk from Broadway to Ashton Under Hill

We see these old telephone booths in various places both yesterday and today. Lana decided to check this one out and it is now an informal library. Other phone booths are book swapping libraries. Great idea to re-purpose these phone booths into something useable for the local area. 

Jolly good as eventually we come across this kind soul with two dogs. He lives in the area and knows the route we want to take. Just remember though that this walking area does not have signs for the various towns. You just know you are on a walking trail. He gives us great directions, recommends a place to stop for lunch in Ashton Under Hill and off we go.

This is Anna and her dog. They came across us when we were chatting with the older fellow. She says she is going on the same way so we can walk with her for a while. She lives in the area and works for a company that produces those handheld tools that pick up garbage using pincers. She has lived in France, speaks fluent french and is very interesting. She helps us get to the next kissing gate to follow the path over the creek and then keep left. 

We walk on a lot of farmers fields/pastures. Pretty interesting sign although we did not see a bull in the field fortunately. 

Randy walking ahead. It was drizzly on and off for most of our hike this morning. Brief time we walked on road as most of the time it was on the berm. While we appreciated the walking directions from our two dog walkers they did not indicate there was no actual walking path/trail after the one town. We followed our instincts and then knew we needed to walk beside the busy road.  

What an interesting and complicated non-hike. This is not a hike listed in the hiking routes for the Cotswolds. We were walking beside main roads, on the perimeter of farmers fields where there was no walking trail. Walking through towns and beside their homes. 

Many more cyclists like yesterday and some are pretty friendly as they raced by saying "hi". Given walking beside roads is not 'hiking' nor fun we would not recommend this 'route' again.

Ironically, when you look at the route map produced by Garmin with my stats, we pretty much followed the perfect east -> west route. The statistics: 12.8 km distance , 3 hours 11 minutes , 43 metres elevation gain and around 18,000 steps. It was very flat terrain the entire walk with only a couple of inclines. Lana was happy with the flatness, but not the duration of our hike nor the drizzly conditions. Also, we were both attacked by the low hanging nettle bushes and stung multiple times. Lana says her tingly irritation lasts for hours!

Garmin Map of Morning Walk

With Lana checking her Google Maps we do find Ashton Under Hill. It is a real relief to find the small town and then The Star Inn. We arrived around 12:30. The first fellow that helped us with the correct route highly recommended getting our lunch here. We find a table in the pub area and shortly the young server tells us the table is reserved and we need to move. He is very apologetic, but we are learning that at each pub you can reserve tables and a specific table. 

We get a pretty nice larger table and I can make some notes and we can figure out what we want to eat for lunch. There are a couple of menus and their restaurant area is super busy. Apparently a roast meal on a Sunday is a real tradition--could be beef, lamb, chicken or pork roast. I did see on their bar chalk board Scotch Eggs! I love them, but they do not have any available today. Hey! OK, they do have free wifi so they are forgiven. 

I go to the bar to taste an Inch's Medium Apple Cider from the tap. It is a 'fizzy' cider (not a Scrumpy) and we request two small glasses with ice cubes of course. I have to credit the bartenders as it is a weird request in this country as they drink their cider and beer at room temperature. The alcohol by volume for this cider is 4.5% so more confirmation that the British cider is not as heavy with the alcohol so you can drink more. In fact, we have two ciders with our lunch. We are thirsty!

Randy's order of a tuna/corn/mayo baguette with fries and salads. Well that is not our definition of a baguette the sandwich was pretty good! The fries were great and so were both salads.

Lana's order of a Ploughman's Lunch. She was in heaven with two slices of baked ham, half a pork pie, salad, cole slaw, grapes, a chunk of english cheddar cheese, a pickled onion and english chutney/relish to enjoy with the sliced baguette bread. 

OK, lunch is over and now we need to find an Uber or taxi to drive us back to Broadway. There is zero chance of Lana walking back and our original plan was to get transport back to our Airbnb. We find that with their regular pricing Uber app nobody wants to take our ride. When Lana selects the 'premium' option (more expensive) Daniel answers our Uber request and we are eventually picked up and driven back to Broadway.

We are back in Broadway and drop our stuff inside and then walk to The Co-Op to get some water, bread, Daily Mail Newspaper and a bag of English candies Fruit Pastilles (for Lana). On the short walk back, we went into the Food Festival area to check out the various foods 'to go'. The fair was packed with people. Many families and probably a fair share of tourists like us. There was a huge tent with sellers and outside a number of kiosks and food trucks. Lots to choose from. 

There is a vegetable stall for the deli in town and the vegetables are amazing. This head of purple cauliflower was so vibrant and healthy looking. 

More vegetables on display for sale. 

There was a BBQ food truck where Randy got a pulled pork sandwich with fries and another food kiosk where Lana picked up a sandwich.  Lana opts for a smaller dinner that is roasted pork on a bun with apple sauce and a slice of crispy pork skin crackling. She also heads to the local Tea Shoppe to get a fruit scone with jam and clotted cream for dessert tonight. At this point neither of us are hungry given the huge lunch we had earlier. 

Finally back to our place and the sun is now shining and it is very hot at around 28 degrees! What a change in weather and we now appreciated the weather conditions for our morning walk as the clouds mostly covered the sun and kept the heat down to a tolerable level. My priority is to shower and then start the laundry so we can have some clean hiking clothes for tomorrow. Update the blog next. 

Our Airbnb washer and dryer as it doubles for both. European washing machines are slower than our North American machines. We had a complete load and it took almost 3 1/2 hours to wash and dry.

For dinner we ate the food we picked up at the Broadway Food Festival earlier and drank another cider we purchased at the Co-Op two days ago. Lana is into Korean movies and shows. We watched "Confidential Assignment 1" using Amazon Prime and it was pretty funny and lots of action. A pretty relaxing end to our eventful day in the Cotswolds. I have 21,500 steps recorded for today. Tomorrow the plan will be for a good walk/hike. Lots more to see in the Cotswolds!