Rob & Laurie Walk the Cotswold Way

August, 2023

Here is a map of our 8-day walking trip around the Cotswolds, beginning and ending in Moreton-in-Marsh.

Each morning we had a lovely full English breakfast. Our excitement about the day and our love for each other made everything around us a little blurry.

We left the honey-coloured village we had stayed in, with its adorable name, like Bourton-on-the-Water or Lower Slaughter or Chipping Campden and followed the path across rolling farmlands.

The path led through pastures of grazing cows and sheep. So many sheep! Sometimes the app told us to walk around the left side of the sheep; sometimes around the right side of the sheep. Sometimes, for variety, one of us walked around the left side of the sheep and one of us walked around the right side, and then we met on the other side.

We followed the path as it wound its way through magical forests filled with trees, chipmunks, and unicorns. At first, it was thrilling to see all those unicorns. But after a while, we were like, “Really? MORE unicorns?”

Eventually, the path led us out of the woods into another honey-coloured village with an adorable name. In a village called Stow-on-the-Wold, we got to see the inspiration for Bilbo’s door in J. R. R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit.

🚪HOBBIT HUMOR: Hey, guess what Bilbo Baggins got for his birthday! A year’s subscription to Play Hobbit magazine! (Joke brought to you by Rob’s 15-year-old self, who got this question wrong on a pop quiz but made everyone in his English class laugh.)

By late afternoon, we arrived at the honey-coloured village in which we would spend the night. We dropped off our backpacks, cleaned up, and explored the town before dinner. We wondered what the next day’s honey-coloured villages, sheep, and unicorn-filled forests would be like.

We met a lot of nice people in the Cotswolds. Here we are at a Beer Garden with a couple who asked to pose with us. They look weirdly large in the photo.

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Here is the link to our trip in case you might be interested in a self-guided walking trip like this one.