Chipping Campden to Fish Hill

As I drove across from Sherington to meet up with Richard for a long weekend of walking in the Cotswolds I was doubting our sanity - it was January and tipping it down with rain. However by the time we'd had our lunch, sitting in the car park at the Fish Hill picnic area (SP121368) above Broadway, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. We were unsure whether to leave one car here (and thus to end our first leg of the Cotswold Way here) or to move it down into Broadway for a longer walk; we decided on the former and it was the right decision. Although the sun was out, parts of the route were extremely muddy which made it quite hard going and slowed us down.

We drove the other car to Chipping Campden, by way of the lovely village of Westington; there were some large Cotswold stone houses here - I wonder how much they're worth... We drove through Chipping Campden, also very attractive but with too many parked cars! We parked in a little parking area on Back Ends (SP148392) and pottered around the town before starting out on the walk. Chipping Campden has a large church, presumably because of the wealth that the wool industry brought in the middle ages. The town also has a lovely "Market Hall" and the Cotswold Way starts here.

We left Chipping Campden and climbed, and soon there were good views back down to the town. We turned left onto Kingcomb Lane and then right to Dover's Hill, where we now had good views in the opposite direction, over the Vale of Evesham. Dover's Hill's claim to fame is that one Robert Dover instituted annual games here in 1612, with the grand title of the Olimpick Games.

We crossed the Dover's Hill car park and had expected a stretch of road walking, but they've made a thorough job of the Cotswold Way - there was a path along the side of the fields alongside the road. We turned right onto another road and again there was a path at some distance from the road. Unfortunately this one was muddy and slippery and we eventually decided that it was better to walk on the wide grass verge by the road.

Where the road turned a corner to the right, we carried straight ahead on The Mile Drove. This bit was fine, but at the end of The Mile Drove (about a mile later!) the route took us across a couple of fields. We were walking straight into the Sun and the path was extremely muddy. It wasn't much fun.

Eventually we emerged at a view point near Fish Hill. I turned right and went heading off; Richard eventually pointed out that I was going the wrong way! I turned around and we headed down to the car park (which is to the left of the view point...).

We drove to the Evesham Premier Inn where we were staying; with fish and chips for our evening meal. We had initially planned this as a weekend at a nice hotel in the Cotswolds, but our favoured Cotswold Inns and Hotels group didn't have any appropriate special offers. The Premier Inn and fish and chips were different, but fine!

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