The Cotswolds: Cider with Harri

A top contender for our favourite Cotswolds pub - the Lock Inn Cafe

If there’s one thing the Cotswolds has in abundance, it’s charming, centuries-old inns, resplendent with stone fireplaces, flagstone floors and floral facades. We strolled into several Cotswold villages to be confronted with not just one enticing pub, but frequently two, and sometimes more. And thrillingly, the majority seem to remain open all day.

This situation takes a little getting used to, I can tell you. As Wales-based hikers, we’ve long stopped fantasising about sipping a cold pint at the end of a twenty-mile day. Hard experience has taught us that you can’t even assume the local pub will be open when you’re walking the Pembrokeshire Coast Path on August Bank Holiday. It’s a similar story in the Black Mountains, the Brecon Beacons and, most recently, in Kidwelly.

Historic, picturesque... and open

Outside the cities and popular tourist spots Wales’ pubs are fast disappearing. No doubt, the majority of the closed rural pubs we encounter on our travels are casualties of the recession and people choosing to drink at home rather than pay high pub prices.

Others have, through necessity, transformed themselves into upmarket eateries with extensive menus and vast car parks (and prices to suggest two scruffy hikers with a fiver to spend are not their target market).

We often stumble upon rural pubs which would probably be referred to as ‘life style’ businesses, meaning that the doors only open when the publican cares to position himself behind the bar (and our own experiences suggest this rarely coincides with the end of the hiking day).

Uley brewery - keeping the Cotswolds flowing

But these problems belong to Wales and, as we traipsed through the Cotswolds’ rolling hills and valleys, our spirits soared as neighbouring villages vied with one another to provide the best draught beer/cider. This was a land where friendly locals perched on bar stools happy to idle away their afternoons with visitors and where a fit, young South African gardener was willing to stop and talk Virginia Climbers with this old gal (Harri had disappeared to check something out).

In short, from Wiltshire to Gloucestershire, the Cotswolds were a delightful surprise where pubs were concerned; and not only were they all open but they offered an amazing range of beers and ciders.

The obiquitous Strongbow and Magners were nowhere to be seen; this was a land of abundance which catered for a grown-up palate.

Sadly, our alcohol consumption was restricted by the need to remain upright on numerous, and surprisingly slippery, wooded slopes – and to drive back to our Travelodge room. So, despite the abundance of temptation, we had to restrain ourselves to one drink at the end of the day.

With so many perfect hostelries visited (and so many others resisted), it’s difficult to single out just one, but high on our list of favourites must be the enchanting Lock Inn Cafe, next to the canal in Bradford-on-Avon. 

Al sheddo dining at the Lock Inn Cafe

This family-run pub is a worthy tourist attraction in its own right; it feels organic, its colourful decor evolving gradually rather than ever being planned. It’s lively, quirky (a penny farthing is one of hundreds of items hanging from the bar ceiling), garish (not one of the table cloths was the same) and has fun stamped all over it. 

The cafe spills onto the canal courtesy of a narrowboat covered with flowers; on land, assorted garden sheds, filled with tables, chairs and benches, provide additional undercover eating areas. Best of all, the menu is a literary work of art and kept us thoroughly entertained while we enjoyed our two halves of scrumpy.

The pub reminded me of the wonderful Admiral Benbow in Penzance, which, coming from me, is high praise indeed.

Nourishment, alcohol and advice on child-rearing

Other notable pubs were The White Hart Inn, (at Ford, near Castle Combe) which dates back to the 1500s, The Bell in Sapperton (boasting its own horse parking and home of the aforementioned Virginia Climber (and gardener), and The Ram Inn in Bussage where we were immediately welcomed into the fold and thus felt obliged to stay for a hitherto forbidden second drink.

It's going to be so hard to return to Carmarthenshire pubs and their closed doors the week after next!

Arriving on horseback? Parking;s no problem at
the Bell at Sapperton

The Cotswolds: Walking nine to five - what a way to make a living

The English countryside - so different from 'our' side of the channel

One of the perks of being ‘workless’ is that I don’t have to worry about booking annual leave when Harri is offered a well-paid but very last-minute outdoor writing commission.

This one was particularly exciting as we were venturing over the border and the work was being offered by none other than the mighty Automobile Association (I write this in full to avoid any confusion about the nature of our work). The timescale was extremely tight but once you’ve said ‘yes’, there’s nothing for it but to get the miles walked.

To be fair, compared to our usual terrain, hiking in the Cotswolds is a walk in the park; the ‘hills’ are small and paths are well-maintained, so well-maintained, in fact, that Harri experienced continual bouts of ‘footpath envy’ throughout our three visits.

Bradford on Avon is definitely worth visiting

From the dry nature of the majority of footpaths, we could only conclude that rainfall is far less frequent in the Cotswolds than in sunny south east Wales.

Our task was straightforward enough. The AA is updating several of its hiking guides, including one called 50 Walks in The Cotswolds, and its editors have commissioned freelance writers to do the groundwork.  Harri’s brief was to check 13 existing walks, making sure they were still walkable, that the number of stiles was unchanged, parking remained available, toilets open and eating places were correctly named (and were still open). It sounds simple – and mostly it was – but quite a few times the directions were confusing and we ended up retracing our steps, several times having to walk  downhill and start again from the bottom.

Great Chalfield Manor, Holt, was built in 1480

It’s strange but once we crossed the Severn Bridge into England everything felt, well different. It’s hard to put my finger on what  changed exactly, but the whole landscape, the ambience in villages, the architecture... everything felt, well, foreign and unfamiliar.

Harri uses the term ‘gentrified’ to describe the pristine villages, former farmhouses and country pubs/restaurants that we often encounter on our travels but, somehow, it’s more than that. England just feels different from Wales and, with the exception of my beloved west Cornwall, I’ve not always warmed to middle England’s landscape.

Our first walk in the Wiltshire Cotswolds did little to change my view. Holt was a pretty enough village boasting several pubs, the obligatory upmarket (and over-priced) delicatessen and a National Trust manor, but the busy through-road and narrow pavements were not conducive to relaxed strolling. The neighbouring fields with their wheat crops and well-defined footpaths made for pleasant walking but, fresh from our trip to the Gower, there was little about the landscape to impress.

The Kennet and Avon Canal at Avoncliff

Fortunately, things picked up after elevensies when we headed for Bradford on Avon where we had two routes to check. We didn’t park in the town but further along the Kennet and Avon Canal in Avoncliff where it was free (one of the big pluses of Cotswold walking is that the parking is almost always free).

Both afternoon walks were thoroughly delightful and thankfully the ominously named ‘water meadows’ alongside the River Frome were solid underfoot. 

This was the quintessential English countryside, the idealised rural idyll Hollywood producers are convinced is enjoyed by all Brits who don’t live in London (Londoners, we know, live in four-storey, terraced mansions with butlers to answer the door, as portrayed in The Parent Trap, or, if young professionals, in vast, converted Victorian warehouses). And this deluded view of everyday life doesn’t stop with Hollywood producers if the friendly American woman we encountered on the Paris metro a few years ago is typical. Having established we were Welsh, she then asked the eight-year-old Alanna if she bought her school uniform at Harrods! Er excuse me, BHS no less.

While all this annoys me intensely, I couldn’t help getting a little bit excited when I spotted a  gorgeous detached cottage perched halfway up a hill; within minutes, I'd convinced myself that this  was the home of Kate Winslet’s character Iris in the immensely silly but very watchable romantic comedy The Holiday. For most of the film the cottage was covered in snow but I was as sure as anyone could be... until I got home and checked the facts out online. Iris’s cottage isn’t real – a fake exterior was built in two weeks in the middle of an empty field. Worse, the fictional character lived in Surrey and not the Cotswolds at all.

It was all beginning to make sense. I’d always been sceptical about Iris’s daily commute  – travelling from the Cotswolds to central London seemed an awfully long journey to do every day. Then an estate worker (though with that accent, he could have been the owner) confirmed that many people do commute from the Cotswolds, including the Wiltshire villages, and when the proposed super fast Bath to London trains are running, the journey will be reduced to just one hour, 20 minutes each way.

Maybe it’s me, but that still sounds like an awful long time at the beginning and end of each working day!