Stow on the Wold and the Bourton Loop

The full compliment of 12, including a new recruit, met in Stow on one of this summer’s rare sunny days.
We passed through Stow’s market square and out of the town via Maugesbury Manor and down to the Beeching cut railway line that once linked the main line stations of Kingham and Cheltenham.

Up and over Wyke hill onto Wyke Rissington, a little Cotswold village with a large open green and the church of St. Leonard’s where, in his day, Gustav Holst played the organ.

The Eye and Dickler rivers race over Greystones Farm Wildlife Trust and Salmondsbury Meadow SSI opening out the pretty tourist town of Bourton-on-the-Water with its cute bridges, coffee shops and ice cream stands. Here we took a nice long lunch watching our fellow “grockles“ enjoying their post lockdown time of day.

The chocolate box village of Lower Slaughter provided us with a coffee stop before the last leg onward back the end of our 10.5 mile outing taking a peak of the yew trees that arc over the Church’s porch that are famously Rumoured was the door that sparked J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Doors of Durin,” the west gate of Moria that appears in a scene in the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Many thanks to those who came from far and wide to enjoy this outing. The good news is that this walk will be one of those available at this years South Midlands organised AOG at Moreton in Marsh. (Walk Ref: Sun 4)

J Hambleton.

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