Stow On The Wold, Cotswolds

16th - 18th March 2007

[3 - The Walk (cont.)] 

 Nadine Matthias, Tim Porter and Mark Hicken making friends with an equestrian.

 

Perhaps one of the more popular villages in the Cotswolds is that of Bibury. A feature of the village are the oft-photographed medieval almshouses of Arlington Row. Bibury is a village and civil parish on the river Coln about 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Cirencester. The artist and craftsman William Morris called Bibury "the most beautiful village in England" when he visited it. Its honey-coloured 17th-century stone cottages with steeply pitched roofs once housed weavers who supplied cloth for fulling (a process of eliminating dirt and oils in cloth making, especially wool) at nearby Arlington Mill. The mill now houses a folk and agricultural museum, containing a room dedicated to Morris. The River Coln flows alongside the main street. Its water supplies the trout farm, where some 10 million rainbow trout are spawned yearly. The Cotswolds is characterised by attractive small towns and villages built of the underlying Cotswold stone, a yellow oolitic limestone. An oolite is a sedimentary rock formed from ooids, spherical grains composed of concentric layers which have cemented together. The name derives from the Greek word ̣oion meaning egg.

 
 

Arlington Row cottages in Bibury.

 

Open farmland along a stone wall near the B4068.

 

Cotswold horse riders making the most of the weather.

 

Horses graze in their paddocks near Naunton.

 

Muddy path on the approach to Naunton.

 

Stopping for a drink at the Black Horse Inn at Naunton.

 

John Roberts enjoys a tea.; Any and Maeve sunning themselves at the Black Horse Inn.

 

We passed the Cotswold Huntsman Quarries and made our way along a fairly muddy section has we descended the valley into the town Naunton until we reached the Black Horse Inn, where we stopped for a break and to enjoy the warm sunshine. Heading out of the valley once again, we headed south-east along open countryside and farmland. It was a bit boggy in parts. We passed a farm with hundreds of chickens in an open field. Nadine attracted their attention as if offering food and they all flocked around her. It was comical. Close to where the A436 (Old Gloucester Road) and the A429 to Stow-on-the Wold join, we crossed and entered the town of Bourton-on-the-Water. We stopped for tea but not having too much time available, we caught a bus back to Stow-on-the Wold and walked back to the hostel. On the Saturday evening Vanda prepared a fantastic Czech Goulash whilst John and Bern supplied a pudding. All this followed by a stupendous guitar session from Dave Colli, who also introduced us to a compact disc he had cut. Zoltan, who had spent the day in Stow-on-the Wold, was feeling much better at this stage.

 

Jenny and Mark on the ascent out of Naunton.

 

Idyllic Cotswolds farmland.

 

The Cotswold village of Naunton.

 

 

Walking on ahead.

 

Bourton-on-the-Water.

 

Stow-on-the-Wold - The Square - a typical Cotswolds village facade.

 

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[2 - The Walk]

[3 - The Walk (cont.)]

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