Winchcombe to Old Cleeve

 

We were royally entertained at breakfast this morning. 

Our co-occupants in the B&B this time were a Canadian/ Cambodian couple who work for a development NGO, assisting small communities with basic infrastructure like sanitation and access to clean water. We exchanged notes over scrambled eggs & salmon on the impact of cuts to foreign aid and the woeful lack of any progressive check against Big Capital. Just your average casual breakfast chitchat with strangers.

Midway through this earnest conversation, our landlady Sarah entered the room and parked herself on a chair by the door, blocking off any easy escape, and proceeded to hold court in a rambling monologue, regaling us on a series of topics of her own choosing - mainly family stories and the traits of nationalities she disliked (principally the French, but Americans also came in for a patrician caning). All this delivered in the plummiest cut-glass English tone, and in such a chatty and amiable way that it was hard to know whether to laugh or take offence.

The visitors guest book was brought out, and we were obliged to leaf through previous guests’ comments and “invited” to submit our own glowing remarks, all under the Lady’s watchful eye. Pure Fawlty Towers.

Eventually we were released back to our rooms, where we swiftly got packed and managed to exit without further intervention.

After grabbing some chocolate bars and mixed nuts in anticipation that there are no shops and services for next couple of stages, we regained the CW out of Winchcombe, climbing steadily through fields and woodland to reach Belas Knap long barrow (title picture), an immaculately preserved Neolithic burial mound (c 3,500 BCE). Our first short, sharp shower of the day occasioned evasive action by way of sheltering in the portal to the death chamber. Cheerful.

After two hours, we were back within near view of Winchcombe, having executed a massive loop, before heading South again onto Cleeve Common, a really attractive plateau of rolling grassland. At this point, it got ominously overcast and we took the forewarning to garb up in full waterproofs, inc rucksack covers. Before long, the rain thrashed down as we reached our off-ramp for the day at Old Cleeve. Day 3 stage was a short hop of just eight miles, due to the lack of available accommodation over this stretch of the CW (short of getting a taxi back to Cheltenham for the night).

We enjoyed a rewarding lunchtime pud of blackberry and apple crumble with custard at the Rising Sun pub/ hotel where we are staying, and are now using the opportunity of the abbreviated day of activity to air out wet clothes and rest weary limbs.

Our evening entertainment at dinner was a bookend to the start of the day, with Basil Fawlty on duty as waiter, repeating back our order at high decibels for the rest of the restaurant to hear and grinning maniacally right in our faces as he extracted the obligatory statement of satisfaction with the food. Mind you we'd ordered award winning beef and ale pies at the National Pie Championships, which sounds like my kind of event.

Joff x