England #18 - Chedworth Walks in The England Chronicles - September 2024

(Various days between Sept 14-20 2024)

We did a lot of walking around our Airbnb neighborhood, so I’m going to give gorgeous Chedworth its own separate entry. We’d go touring during the day and usually got back well before dark, giving us time for walks most evenings. We did take off to Wiltshire on Wednesday and spent that night in All Cannings so we could get plenty of Avebury/Wiltshire time but other than that our evenings were spent in Chedworth.

There were several nights that I took an Alone Walk, the first one being Monday after our veeeery full day of sightseeing in Sherborne, Bourton-on-the-Water, Upper & Lower Slaughter, and Stow-on-the-Wold. I was a little afraid of hurting Kim’s feelings when I asked if she’d mind me going out for a walk by myself, but she did not appear to mind in the least and probably needed a bit of Alone Time herself. I’d done a blue fuckton of driving that day and really really really needed to go off by myself and explore and walk fast and decompress. Kim is the best travel companion ever, but she does loooove to chat and by then I was a little overloaded with the constant conversation. I am also a ridiculously fast walker by nature - I remember my very fit mom being annoyed at me on a trip to the beach when I was a teenager because I walk so fast! - and Kim is a slow walker at the best of times, and her knee bothers her as well so it’s an uneven match.

I was quite thrilled to be off wandering alone in the countryside! The neighborhood is SO pretty, and also…so confusing! One of the reasons we didn’t stay out THAT late, other than being ancient, is that it was hard enough to find the Airbnb during daylight hours even after we’d been there for days. We were always going weird backwards ways to get there and missing turns and being confused. Same thing on foot. But it was so pretty we didn’t care!

This was right outside our Airbnb, across from our host’s house. The road dead-ended just out of sight.

   And this is our cute little car in front of the host’s house. Our cottage is just out of sight, up the driveway and to the right. The driveway was very narrow and lined with big stones and there wasn’t room to turn around at the top, so we just walked up. 

  And the neighborhood -

These are ALL out of order, but this is from my first Alone Walk on Monday. I’d gone down a footpath and come out at the back of the sadly closed local pub. It hadn’t been closed long and these were overgrown storage buildings I think- the actual pub wasn’t in such dire condition and said it was temporarily closed. (*** just looked it up and the Seven Tuns pub has been there since 1610, and there’s a group trying to save it)

Gorgeous fields. This is one of the views that was a signal we knew where we were! We’d be driving/walking along lost and then realize, OH! There’s that view!

One of the numerous identical roads that we were constantly finding ourselves lost on. They would always run into other roads and we’d eventually figure out where we were. The GPS and the Maps app were oddly not a lot of help in Chedworth although Apple Maps did pretty well most of the time in the Cotswolds. 

There were public footpaths EVERYWHERE! One of them went to the Roman Villa which I think is only about a mile away from Chedworth by foot, although it’s about a gazillion miles by car. 

The Village Hall, which was a helpful landmark. It’s right on the main road into Chedworth, and we’d turn to the Airbnb beside it. Unless we missed the turn. 

The school, which is near the village hall and also a helpful landmark. 

This field had a footpath through it which I took during one of my Alone Walks. 

 There was a Super Moon while we were there! I was absolutely astonished that I got a picture with my phone that you can actually see the details in, blurry though they are. I also got impressive pictures of it with my SLR camera’s regular lens. Usually you need the big heavy zoom lens that I didn’t take with me because it is SO big and SO heavy. 

With the SLR, I think the next day -

It IS getting quite dark in these pictures, which are from my first evening’s Alone Walk. I think this was about the time that I realized I was not at all sure where I was, or which way I needed to go to get back to the Airbnb. I knew I was in the vicinity, but that was about it. It finally occurred to me to use Find My Friend to locate Kim, who was happily not that far away. I think I was one road up from where I needed to be - kind of behind our Airbnb on a hill, but not too far away. Crisis averted! 

Next stop, the Chedworth Roman Villa, and of course more Bourton-on-the-Water.