DAY 2
A quick but full English breakfast at Wadfield Farm then a dash up at the edge of the woodland past the Cotswold Lions (secretly, they are sheep with terrible shaggy dreadlocks of fine wool)

to the skeletons in the long barrow at Belas Knap,

drop down through the woods to Postlip Hall, keep the stone wall to the right

past the Chapel (1200s), bell turret and stone tithe barn,

over the style through the gate to Cleeve Common then onwards and upwards to a distant vista of Winchcombe and Sudely castles. We popped back to reality for a cheese sandwich at the golf house and joined the golfers finishing their round and seemingly oblivious of the museum beneath the escarpment.

Daring not to sit for too long as we could feel the coolness and knew we would be reduced to stone statues at any moment. A passing deer and squirrel and fox all scurried by to remind us how quickly the minutes were passing and how little distance we were covering. Finally we popped out of the wood and landed in someone’s garden who immediately brought us a cup of tea, told us the family’s whereabouts (we felt we should have known them), sold us another map and pointed us in the direction of tonight’s home – a fabulous Indian restaurant and B&B just beneath the Dowdeswell Reservoir, and just across the road