Where will your ML take you?

This was a far cry from battling wet tents. 

Stumbling through bogs.

Dripping rain from clothing and noses,

wandering round indistinguishable contours

and wondering which misty hill was the fuzzy shape rising in front.

This was the shape of many of my practice, training and qualifier days.  When I wondered if I’d ever complete, or would it ever be worth while.

Two years down the line I can say it was, is even.

Overbury Church

I’ve been slowly acquiring work with my ML and this weekend worked for a lovely company, Walking Women. 

They organise walking holidays around the UK and abroad.  I’ve now had the good fortune to work with them twice, this weekend in the Cotswolds.  One of my old stomping grounds from days when, living in Warwickshire plains, the Cotswolds rolling hills were the nearest things to mountains I was able to get.

Alderton Church

Tents were definitely not on the agenda.  Our base was the Beckford Inn.  Lovely en suite accommodation and delicious food.  Rain, even snow could have showed up in February, but being the ‘record breaking weather weekend of 2019’ the sky remained  deep blue bar a touch of early morning mist.

Bright sunshine providing the perfect backdrop for soft sandstone buildings.   Scatterings of white blossom on trees the nearest thing to snow.  A far cry from the ‘beast from the east’ of 2018.

Three walks in three days.  A potter from the Inn South and East towards Dumbleton.  Where the most dangerous encounter was crossing the busy A46 back at rush hour.

Tower on Bredon Hill

Bredon hill rises to a massive 280m, but gives a little  bit of a ridge walk as your tour round the western edge.  It is apparently possible to see the Malverns from Bredon Hill.  Not so.  On this cloud free Cotswolds day a haze had dropped over the heady heights of Worcestershire.

Bredon teeters on the edge of the main Cotswolds range and you need to head inland a bit to catch the rest of the folds.  Winchcombe is quintessentially English town.  Tipping out of our cars on a sleepy Sunday morning the only sound was that of church bells.  Despite the illusion of summer there were few people around as we headed out of the village on one of the many trails radiating from the village. 

Ways from Winchcombe

With the Winchcombe Way, Cotswold Way, Warden’s Way, Gloucestershire Way and Puck Pit Lane all crossing or culminating here it is hardly surprising that some farmers were keen to keep walkers to the ‘path’. 

No chance of missing the route

Clearly there are much more busy times to be here and we were lucky to be walking in relative solitude, our ‘path’ only crossing with the occasional local dog walker.

Cotswolds’ rolling hills

And my next job?  Camping in a field with DofE kids.  Never mind.