It rained on and off all day. Whenever I thought it might stop, it would start again. I stopped to take a pee after we entered a National Trust forest and was surprised by the sudden appearance of a woman walking her dog. It turned out that the paths through these forests are popular routes for dog walkers and most of the people we saw were accompanied by their canine companions.
We walked through the site of a Stone Age fort and then got lost. We’d taken the wrong path and were headed in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the right direction meant crossing a very busy roundabout. I saw a gap in the traffic and ran for it. Christine was trapped in the centre of the roundabout for ten minutes until a kind driver stopped for her. Then we were into a beech forest. Christine loves the mood the old beech trees create and these forests have become her favourite places to walk.
Then it was off the path and up a hill to a village where we’d been told we’d find a pub for lunch. It was one of the big pubs run by Greene King, a brewery. It’s become very difficult for ordinary pubs to survive on selling beer and bar snacks (stricter enforcement of drunk-driving laws and a ban on smoking inside bars and restaurants have encouraged many of their customers to stay home with cans of cheap lager) and most of the pubs we’ve seen have been like this one, more like fancy restaurants or hotels. Food’s good, though.
In the afternoon we walked through a thick forest which kept us dry. We could hear the rain but little penetrated the dense canopy of leaves above us, so we were able to put our rain gear away. we made a long, muddy descent on some kind of forest access road, past a fenced clearing where the trees had been recently coppiced–cut close to the ground so that they begin to grow new shoots. The new growth is a favourite food of deer, who have to be kept away or they will eat all of it and kill the trees. Eventually we began a long, muddy climb, proving that what goes down must also come up.
There were more hills to come and we were very tired when we found another pub. This one had an espresso machine and we drank coffee and ate cookies in our muddy clothes and boots. Then we pushed on, across a very tricky golf course where you couldn’t see any of the greens from the tee, and eventually into the village of Painswick. We ate a delicious dinner at a restaurant populated by moneyed Londoners and then went back to our B&B where we slept heavily. Our walk was only 20 kilometres but with the hills it seemed much longer. Our speed was a frankly embarrassing three kilometres per hour. Even allowing for frequent map checks and stops to admire the view, that’s a pretty poor performance. However, like Geoff says, this is the adjustment period, where we get used to climbing hills, and in time they will get easier.
