B2B Day 26 Uley to Stroud and London: The Last Day

The last day of the walk, and some mixed feelings—glad to be done, but not wanting to be done. For an OS map of today's walk (8.81 mi; 14.2 km; 1,627 ft total ascent) click here.

We ate our breakfast of croissants and bananas that we had brought with us, tidied up and packed, and left around 10:00. We saw our host Janet who told us how to cut through the neighbourhoods to the village. At the Uley Community store, we got a Bunter’s chicken tikka sandwich and two flapjacks. We’re rather wary of flapjacks, having eaten several that we haven’t enjoyed, but when they look homemade they are usually good. These looked homemade.

We walked past the village church and uphill through a field,

 

The view back downhill towards Uley

and then a short but steep uphill through the woods to another prehistoric hill fort. It was really cool. It was also a bit rainy. 

Entering the hill fort

Resuming our walk through the woods, we met three walkers who didn’t say much, and then four Canadians from Vancouver. It was one of the women’s birthday, and she was going to stop in Dursley to have cake and celebrate. They told us that the Toronto Raptors had won the NBA Championship, which really surprised Ken.

We had a bit of a climb up out of the forest, and came to a bench at the intersection of some roads, and sat and ate our lunch there during a break in the rain. We even had some sun at the tail end of lunch. While we ate lunch, we saw three people pass by, and the two women were not dressed for walking—they had purses and fancy boots, and one had a fur-lined collar on her coat. We wanted to see if they were actually headed onto the Cotswold trail, but we got talking and missed seeing where they went. By the way, the flapjacks were good, though a bit sweet.

After that, we went down a path into some darker woods, and it began to rain. We were putting our coats on just as three women came by. Ken told them we had been in denial about the rain, but were now giving up and putting on our coats. Further on, we met a couple that we really enjoyed talking with. They had done a lot of walking. She was from Southern California, and he had a British accent, but we got the impression that they lived in the States. He congratulated us a couple of times about completing our long walk, and said that only people who walked a lot would know what an accomplishment it was. He also mentioned that he was tired about washing out muddy socks every night, a sentiment with which we could definitely agree!

We then arrived at a viewpoint and topograph (a diagram of what we were seeing in the landscape) which we were able to enjoy looking at in the temporary stoppage of rain. We then walked further to look at a reconstructed long barrow (burial mound). This one was originally 2 metres high, and had about 20 people buried in it over the time period of about 200 years. 

At the excavated and reconstructed barrow

Our wooded path then took us on a long steady downhill that hurt our toes. 

 

The path through the woods

We periodically heard what we decided was a lonely bachelor bull bellowing out his sadness. We saw a herd of cows with long horns, but the bellowing was coming from another higher field away from the cows. 

We came to a decision point, and opted to go to Selsley rather than King’s Stanley. Sara took her coat off because she was getting so hot, and then had to put it on again ten minutes later because it started raining again, which was slightly frustrating.

We paused at the foot of a hill trying to decide whether to go up the hill to Selsley common or to take a lower road. As we pondered, two runners came down the muddy hill, the man in front running right through the mud. He asked if we had seen any other runners, and he explained that he was checking out the course for an upcoming relay race. He said it was worth climbing the hill for the views from the common, and we’d know whom to blame if we were disappointed. Ken said that there would be no recriminations, and he shouted back over his shoulder, “Well, you’d need to catch me for that!” A woman was running behind him, and she just smiled at us and said hello. We did decide to go up the steep hill, with a few pauses for rest.

It was worth it when we got to the top, with an almost 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. There were lots of people and dogs up there. We enjoyed the views and looked at the topograph. 

Barrows on Selsley common

There were many paths, and we asked a woman how to get to the church. We got going on a path and then ended up in a section of small hummocky hills created by a former quarry. We did manage to find our path again and got down to the church in Selsley. It was a Victorian church with a lot of stained glass done by the Pre-Raphaelite artists, and Sara got a guide-book for future reference.

We then arrived at The Bell pub at ten minutes to four, and learned that if we ordered immediately, we could get food. So we did. We knew that we would be on the train and arriving late in London, so this was our best chance for a nice evening meal, our last one in England. Because it was Sunday, Sara had the roast veal with Yorkshire pudding and a horseradish cream sauce that Ken thought was amazing. Ken had the best fish of the trip, with good chips. We shared a bread pudding with custard sauce as dessert, and it was just the thing to end our final walk of the trip, and an excellent and satisfying “last pub meal.” 

As we were walking away, our server had gotten off his shift and was walking our way. He asked if we needed directions, and then said we could walk with him aways until we got to where he could point us to the canal path. And so we did. We found the canal path interesting, since it had fairly recently been restored. It was a short walk from there to the train station in Stroud, where we caught a train to London Paddington.

The train was new, clean, and quiet. We had reserved seats in the “quiet car,” and it was quiet. Sara had to walk through the next car to go to the bathroom, and it was definitely more noisy!

We arrived in London around 9:00 p.m., took the underground to Victoria station, and checked into our room at Easy Hotel in Victoria. We knew what to expect—a small room with space only for the double bed, and a tiny shower room. However, the room was hot and stuffy, and we are thinking that if we had to do it over again, we would either finish the walk and stay at a B&B that night, or stay in a nicer place in London like the London House Hotel, which is considerably more expensive but also a lot more comfortable.

We did have a good day of walking this last day, seeing good sights, meeting interesting people, and enjoying good food.