B2B Day 24 West Littleton to Wortley: A Very Long, Very Wet Day on the Cotswold Way

Our longest day of walking—probably ending up at around 16 miles if the walk back down from Wotton to Wortley is included. For an OS map of today's walk (14.4 mi; 23.2 km; 1,010 ft total ascent), click here.

The weather forecast predicted that there would be rain till 10:00 a.m., then clear until maybe 2:00 p.m., and then clear from 3:00 onwards. Wrong on all counts! After another excellent breakfast and a chat with Boo about walking, she pointed us from her front door to the gate to the road, and we set out in the rain. As we passed the church again, we saw the vans for the movie shoot of Sanditon that weekend. We did a bit more road walking than we might have, just because it was so wet. Along the road, we passed a section where there seemed to be evenly spaced vans, and evenly spaced dogs that were invisible to us, each one barking as we approached. There were two empty kennels further down the road, for good measure. At a junction we met the Cotswold Way, which we would follow for most of the rest of our walk this trip.

We eventually came into Tormarton, and decided to visit the church. There were a couple of walkers inside, and we chatted with the woman a fair amount. She said that they hadn’t met many people on the Cotswold Way, but that there were four Americans behind them.

After we came out of the church, we were deciding whether to take road or path, and we saw four people on the path and decided to take the path in order to meet them. They were indeed four Americans from Colorado. This was their first long walk in England, and so far, they had only experienced mud and rain. Ken mentioned that he had worked at a church camp in Colorado, and one woman said, “Not La Foret?” It was, and she had been to that camp and was confirmed there. They told us that the St. Louis Blues had won the Stanley Cup, and that they were Colorado Avalanche fans. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting them!

Our American friends

We took the path through the Doddington Estate, apparently owned by the Mr. Dyson of vacuum-cleaner fame. We were looking at the sheep on the hills and commenting on how white and clean they looked, and Ken said, “Well, they’re Dyson sheep!” meaning they had been well vacuumed. When we got closer we realized that they had been shorn rather than vacuumed.

The paths through the estate were very well waymarked. The paths themselves were quite muddy, and it was raining again. There was a tricky downhill stretch, but neither of us slipped.

After we emerged from Doddington Park, the rain got heavier and heavier, just after noon. We sat on a bale of hay in a shed at the side of the road, and watched the rain bounce off of the road’s paved surface (rather than its bouncing off of us). 

Rain dancing off the pavement

We decided to leave at 12:30 whether or not the rain had finished, and it had diminished a bit by then. We walked into the village of Old Sodbury, quite sodden ourselves. We stopped for a pub lunch at The Dog Inn, hanging our coats up and putting our packs by the fire (the fire wasn’t lit, but it felt like the packs could drip there safely). The cottage pie was good; we didn’t enjoy the quiche as much. The people were friendly. While we were in the pub, it had stopped raining and there was occasional brightness outside. We geared up and stepped out of the pub, and the rain was instantly torrential. We came back into the pub to wait to see if the rain would decrease. A man sitting at the bar looked at his phone for the forecast, and said, “Oh, it’s supposed to be sunny spells from now on!” We did set out into a slightly lighter rain, but it was steady and at times heavy. Then through the woods on a very wet path, to a prehistoric hill fort that looked impressive and interesting, but we only lifted our heads briefly in the rain, looked at it as we walked through it, and kept going. We met two Canadians from Ontario who were walking the Cotswold Way—they were obviously having the same rainy muddy experience as we.

For a few minutes, Ken couldn’t find the path we wanted, and Sara said she’d go up a path that looked overgrown just to see if it got better. It did, and it was the path we wanted. We came up to a farm, and resumed the path through a grain field. This was the best grain field path ever, with about a two foot wide space between the grain, so it was easy to stick to the path, and wet grain didn’t fall over and soak us as we were walking through.

We then walked on the road a bit, and the weather was a bit better. We saw ads along the road for a 3 km run on Saturday. We saw four men walking who recommended the Beaufort Arms pub, and then saw some cute sheep who just looked at us and didn’t seem afraid. We found the wonderful lane described in the Cotswold Way guide book that Ken had brought, and it was indeed a broad, good path into Hawkesbury Upton. We passed a Mom with two children, and the children were taking turns happily jumping in large puddles on the path. Mom made them wait till we had passed, and Sara commented that she wished she got as much enjoyment from getting wet as the children seemed to experience.

The path took us to the Beaufort Arms, an interesting pub with a very cool skittles alley. Ken wished we had more time there so that we could learn how to play skittles. The man we dealt with first was “minding the house” for the publican (Sara noticed he had to look up the price for lemonade), and she overheard the publican when he came in asking about business, and the “minder” replied that he had been serving “soggy walkers” all day. The publican was friendly, and when he found out we were from Canada, he said that he saved his ire for Americans. But why have ire at all, Sara silently wondered? The more we travel, the more we feel that people are people; holding to stereotypes and biases, even in “fun,” isn’t a fruitful way of interacting with people. [Sorry for the mini-sermon!]

On the road again, we passed Pond Cottage and the Somerset Monument, but decided not to take pictures because of the chance of rain. We took a field path to Lower Kilcot, then a slippery and muddy downhill path. What surprised Sara was the suction of the mud—it was gooey, clingy, and (as another walker put it), felt like it added ten pounds of weight to each foot as it accumulated. We saw Bridge Cottage, which was absolutely lovely. The loveliness was followed by the worst path of the walk so far—muddy and rutted, the mud the colour of chocolate. It was dispiriting to walk through. When we got to Alderley, we decided to take the road, and that worked well. We wanted to find our B&B in Wortley, but then take the bus to Wotton under Edge to buy our dinner. We wandered into the grounds of where we thought our B&B was, and a neighbour came out and directed us correctly. We saw where the garden house was, but then we were worried about missing the bus, so before dropping off our packs or anything, we walked to the bus stop (which we needed to find first). We ended up waiting for the bus about 20 minutes, standing with our packs because there was nowhere to sit. The bus did come a bit earlier than scheduled, which was a small consolation. As we were riding towards Wotton, the way seemed much longer than Ken had thought, and we knew that we had to walk back from Wotton because we were on the last bus of the day. That was dispiriting as well, since we had already experienced a long, rainy, muddy walk with few rests.

In Wotton, we found the Tesco Express, and the nice clerk there advised us to get the meal deal to save money, and generally chatted with us in a kindly and cheerful way, which was encouraging. We left the village around 7:10 p.m. and Ken found good paths out of town, through a cow pasture, and on the road (instead of through a bean field which might have been too wet). It seemed that suddenly, our gate appeared (at about 7:45). We knew the place we were staying was going to be beautiful, so we got in the door and immediately stripped off boots and socks, and unzipped our muddy pant legs before coming inside. Sara went into the bathroom and Ken heard her voice exclaim, “Oh, Ken, it was worth every step!” There was a lovely deep bathtub, a feature she wasn’t sure would be there. 

The bath!

The aesthetics of the garden room we were staying were outstanding—we particularly liked the material chosen for curtains and accents in the room. 

We had our little dinner of sandwiches and crisps, supplemented with some fruit our host had kindly left for breakfast. We were so tired we forgot to hang out several things to dry, like our gloves, but Sara did wash out our pant legs and dried them on the heated towel rail. We were surprised that there was no Internet, but we enjoyed having a bath and then watching t.v.