Walking Tours in united-kingdom

The Cotswolds

*  On Foot from Stratford-on-Avon to Winchcombe

*  Easy Walking Through Rolling Hillsand Picturesque Villages

*  Stone Built Houses and Dry-Stone Walls

This holiday is for those who want an easy introduction to walking in the English countryside. The Cotswolds are a range of gentle hills extending northeast of the city of Bath, past Cheltenham to Stratford-on-Avon, the 'Heart of England'. An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Cotswold landscape is an entrancing mixture of parkland, cultivated fields with dry-stone walls, and patches of unspoilt woodland. Early prosperity based on the medieval woollen industry, and the availability of easily worked honey-coloured limestone, resulted in the building of a unique cluster of beautiful towns and villages.

Our walk takes in the best of the Cotswold countryside. Starting in Stratford, Shakespeare's birthplace, we loosely follow the line of the Cotswold Way. On the second day our route passes close to the wonderful National Trust Gardens at Hidcote Manor, near Mickleton (open to the public on most days). There are wide views over the vales of Severn and Avon, toward the Malvern Hills and Wales. We spend a night at the superb village of Broadway, where the main street is lined with magnificent stone-built houses as well as some tempting antique shops. We visit the medieval wool towns of Chipping Campden, and Bourton-on-the-Water, where the River Windrush flows down the main street. Guiting Power, a perfect Cotswold village, leads us on to the atmospheric ruins of Hailes Abbey, destroyed under Henry VIII, and the still inhabited Sudeley Castle, where Henry VIII's last wife Katherine Parr lived. The tour ends at the delightful town of Winchcombe nestling in a deep valley near the Regency town of Cheltenham.

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