I woke early and went to have some tea in the library. The bar was open, all the liquor sitting out, but the second-hand book store rejects were safely locked up. I killed a couple hours and tried again. There was hot water for tea and they brought milk out just in time. They unlocked the balcony but set it for a special breakfast so I stayed in the library.
The woman who sat in the library with me yesterday came through with her bags. She's off to London and Prague. I'd heard her talking about a good book hidden amongst the useless tomes, by Sarah Churchill. She had loved it and when she brought it back to shelve it, I saved her the trouble. I started it during breakfast (Barbara overslept) and it looks really good.
 | Scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms for breakfast. I love grilled tomatoes and mushrooms for breakfast. Barbara woke up when I got back to the room and we both headed for the balcony. The special guests still hadn't had their breakfast so we went out anyway - how long can you reserve the best spot. As soon as we settled in they showed up. Now I'm sitting in the amphitheater listening to every word they say and sending evil thoughts their way. |
We packed our bags so they could move us to single rooms for the last 2 nights (they weren't available before), then we had a motoring excursion to Stanton. I looked over the maps and books in the tub this morning looking for the ultimate Cotswold experience. Mark Richards, in his classic book on the Cotswold Way, waxed eloquent on Stanton and was dry and factual on every other area I'd read about. I mapped a course, we took deep breaths and Barbara recited her mantra, "I'm in the middle," and we took off.
 | The traffic was light, but the driving was still white-knuckle. (The navigator may have been even more disturbed.) The roads are so narrow that there are barely inches between your mirrors, the one on the parked car and the one on the oncoming car. The impossibility of judging where the left mirror and tyre are makes it much worse. My mantra is, "Aaaack, you're too close, aayeee." We made it through a thousand roundabouts in Cheltenham where you never really know which exit to take until you've nearly missed it (we went all the way around one). We made it to Winchcombe and decided it was time for lunch. We saw a sign for a car park and Barbara accidentally pulled into a car park for a restaurant, so we ate there. |
It was so quaint, "twee" I believe is the term, that I thought the food would be too. We both ordered sandwiches but I also ordered soup. The soup was some sort of plant and brie and was delicious. The sandwiches were huge and also delicious. Mine was a steak, onion and mushroom baguette, Barbara had ham and mustard, which still had mayo (which she hates). A small salad and an enormous pile of fries, I mean chips, completed the feast.
 | We made our way on up the road to Stanton, another beautiful town but the first with no apparent collectors of tourist dollars (I mean pounds), although we did pass a couple of very nice inns. We found a car park at the end of the road and followed a woman and her two daughters up (and I mean up) the path. It was incredibly steep. Barbara had had a bad night and wasn't feeling well at all - sore and exhausted. We rested frequently in the shade and somehow stayed the same distance behind the women. Barbara agreed to get to the top of the hill before deciding whether to turn back. She said later that it was competition with the women that kept her moving. The hill was so long and steep that she seemed forget how bad she felt. |
We passed large groups coming our way and realized they had on tshirts reading, "Breakout Breast Cancer". I'm not exactly sure what that meant but it was obviously like our three day breast cancer walks. As we passed a couple of girls one said, "Jeepaws" and the other giggled in perfect imitations of Hayley Mills in Parent Trap. The other answered, "I've never seen anything like THAT before." They were referring to the balls on a sheep alongside the path. In their defense, they were remarkable balls - about the size of a full udder.
 | We came out of the woods to an old hill fort that was now an amazing farm house with many fields under cultivation. I think the nearby fields were canola, or rape seed, but there were a few red poppies along the edges. A field in the distance was solid red, the same hue as the poppies. I can't imagine an opium field in the Cotswolds, but I can't imagine what else would be that color. (It's too late for tulips.) |
Our water bottle had Painswick tap water warmed by sitting in the car while we ate lunch - not exactly refreshing. The climb had been very hot and sticky. The sign promising tea and cakes and ice cream seemed like a mirage. A ramshackle new-old mansion had sprung up amid trucks, sheep, rubble and rubbish at a bend in the trail. It seemed to be a brand new house with a typically high pitched roof covered in old slate tiles. The hillside had been sloppily dozed into, probably displacing hundreds of ancient skeletons, maybe a roman ruin. On the freshly levelled ground were tables and umbrellas. There were only two seats left and the group allowed us to join. We had cold bottled water and homemade lemon cake. They had hot tea and lemon cake. Barbara told them how in Austin they drink everything with lots of ice and mentioned iced tea. You would have thought we were chewing on sheep dung by the look on one woman's face.
Teaching ESL
There were 35 of them hiking about 8 miles. They had hiked all of the Cotswold way (108 miles) over several outings. They had a motorcoach waiting to take them home.
We were revived and ready to continue the hike - downhill. Most of the trail was wide enough for a car and was on solid limestone. Occasionally there were old bricks in the road. I couldn't figure out if the bricks had been used to fill holes or if they had surfaced when they graded the road. I should have dug one out for Julie but I had enough to carry.
We came around a corner and a fairy tale village, Broadway, appeared - much larger than I expected - with the requisite cathedral spire in the foreground. I scanned the surrounding hilltops and found the Broadway Tower, our ultimate goal for the day.
Are there yellow bricks "beneath the ploughed soil"?
We entered Broadway at the church and followed the Cotswold Way signposts down the street. Our next turn was into a tourists' nest. People walking aimlessly drawn by promises of candy and toys. We followed a family with the mother turning over control of pushing a stroller to a boy barely able to reach the handle. As soon as she let go he yelled "look out" plowing into the crowd ahead. A stern "William!" halted his progress.
We had to walk through the thick of the shoppes following the signs to the toilet - almost American in their ruthless marketing. All signs were like Cotswold Way signposts except instead of CW they advertised some shoppe.
We continued through the town and started toward the Tower, only a mile's climb away. I started figuring how long we'd taken to walk this far, added two miles and decided we were going to be getting back too late. I reluctantly suggested that we turn around and Barbara was only too happy to oblige. She wanted to stop at a tavern and watch football for awhile. I didn't. Barbara objected to me driving without a valid license or adequate vision but I convinced her otherwise, or anyway she relented. I marched quickly back to Stanton (in two hours) even though I swear the hills I climbed were much longer and steeper than the ones we descended. |  Tower |
I found the car and started driving on the wrong side as I was supposed to . I was amazed how hard it was to tell when the left wheel would hit the curb. I was feeling pretty confident when I got to the main road. I was reminding myself to go to the far side on the right turn when a car came screaming down the side of the road I forgot to look at. Thank god my immediate reaction was not to swerve back to the right side. I just gunned it out of the way and endured their honks. The rest of the drive went fine.
I met Barbara pretty quickly and we drove back to Painsick in time for another fancy dinner. We're both fantasizing about having a kitchen in Edinburgh. Fresh fruit, greek yogurt, no waiters.
 | We investigated our new rooms, 8 and 11. They're tiny compared to room 5 but bigger than our rooms in Oxford and terribly cute with great views. I was looking out my window at the amphitheater and down at a balcony below. I said, "Barbara?" and she immediately answered. She was right below me admiring the view too. |
We yawned our way through scallops with pureed broccoli, escabeche of red mullet (some sort of fish) on potato salad, salmon and pate, and the wonderful spinach and mushroom lasagne. We switched desserts, having each others favorites - rhubarb cheesecake and cherry panna cotta. We ordered coffee and tea and they brought a little tray of petit four with it. That meant it cost £4.5, maybe twice (yup £9.00). We didn't touch the petit four. We may argue later if the bill isn't incomprehensible.
I had a wonderful shower (room 5 only had a bath) scrubbing off the sweat, limestone, nettles and bugs. I may sleep all day tomorrow.
Mileage - 11.3
