Cotswold Park

The signpost points up the disused North-West drive to a large, slate-roofed, late 18th Century house, designed for a London wine merchant, "a remote setting" (Pevsner's description).

It's one of a bunch of substantial houses dotted at wide intervals along the sides of the steep valley carrying a stream from near Elkstone down into the River Churn at Perrott's Brook, North of Cirencester: Combend, Rapsgate, Cotswold Farm, Moor Wood, Oyster Well and Bagendon House are amongst the others. No paths exist to enable the walker to get very close to most of them, but it's still possible to walk through the grounds and round the back of Cotswold Park: much construction work has being going on there over a period of 15 months or more - that being the interval between my last walk past and today's.

At 9.30, the three of us set foot Southwards in the mist from Five Mile House (newly-reopened by a couple from North Wales). It's tricky walking at first, till you hit Burcombe Lane, but peaceful once away from the A417 - a good circular walk, with two decent climbs to set the heart working: skylarks, trees in bud, a distant view of a group of five deer, some mud, but no rain.

Embarras du choix

This almost obscenely large parade of boots is assembled outside Cowley Manor Hotel. Today's Wednesday walkers had met at nearby Cockleford - lunch at Cowley Manor is not for the short-pocketed - and on our way home, I requested a church photo-stop: St Mary's is bang next to the entrance to the mid-Nineteenth Century house, not so long ago converted into a luxury hotel with Sainsbury money.

It was the first walk I had had with the group on a really wet day - not cold, but unrelentingly damp. Making for the cover of a wood, we chose a path that turned out to be blocked by falling trees, and had to scramble steeply uphill, back out into the open. Our reward was to see a small herd of deer: they looked hard at us before scurrying away, outnumbered by five sodden ramblers.

Crippets

Having become bogged down as I walked through Lott Meadow, I was happy to stay on the tarmac up as far as The Crippets on Wednesday: normally, I would pass through the Burley Fields deer park, but that could have been a quagmire. As it was, I saw that the deer park had been extended to the opposite side of the lane from these soggy sheep. (In one of the paddocks further down was a Jacob's, not polycerate but unicerate - a ewe-nicorn?)

My destination on this sunny morning was the Star Bistro, opened fairly recently at Ullenwood. It serves a very good lunch!

Eight plus one deer

Nearly an ideal day today for a long walk! Not too hot, pretty dry underfoot, and nobody about on the Gloucestershire Way between Stow and Winchcombe. But hardly a moment of sunshine, alas.

This stretch of the Way passes through some of the most remote parts of the Cotswolds. In the long stretch between Condicote and Ford you hardly see one house. And so, of course, the deer have nothing to fear. I particularly liked the albino one on the right of this group. (I am informed it may be a fallow deer amongst roe!)