October 27th Bibury

On Sunday 27th October with blue sky and no wind,"perfect autumn day", 18 Ramblers (including 2 from Gloucester Ramblers) set off on what turned out to be a 7 mile walk as diverting up into Coln St Aldwyn made an extra 1.5 miles. We parked at the top of Bibury and took a right along the track that leads to Bibury Cricket Ground, but we soon went over a stile and diagonally across the field to the top gate, then straight on the track and through another gate onto a path that leads past the Cricket ground. Keeping on the path we went through another gate and down the hillside with lovely view of the valley and the river shimmering in the sunlight. At the bottom we went sharp right on a track and continued up the top of a steep slope, then left and all the way along the top until the path went down hill steeply to a wide open field.

The path on our left was completely flooded as it’s right beside the river, so we went straight ahead up through a lovely wood of mainly beech trees. Then left at top to come down again to join the path by the river, it was very flooded under the gate, but some strangers coming the other way kindly stopped and held the gate wide open as possible so we could slide along the bottom rung and step onto the bank which was very muddy and slippery, luckily only one person lost their footing and went down in the mud. We walked on along beside the river, very flooded on fields the other side. Had to walk through a very muddy section before we came to a wood then the field by river again where we could clean our boots. Once at the bottom of Coln St Aldwyns hill we crossed the road bridge and turned sharp left along a tarmac drive, then turned right over a small bridge to cross another section of river and up a narrow track to top of hill passing the Church, coming out by the Village Shop, which does have a cafe and garden, coffee stopped being served at midday, we were 10 minutes too late, but they allowed us to sit in their lovely garden and eat our lunch plus buy cake and drinks from the shop.

Had a lovely 30 minutes there, then proceeded to walk down through the village of Coln St Aldwyn and back to the river bridge, through the gate and slightly left up the hillside with beautiful view of trees looking back towards Hatherop Castle in the distance. We then continued on a track, through a ploughed field which had a path clearly marked and not muddy all the way to a gate at far end onto the road, then right down a track back to the wood we first went up through, so down through the wood to rejoin the track we came on, then keeping straight until we could divert off to left and clearly marked path all the way back to our cars.

Every one thanked me for the walk and said how much they had enjoyed it on such a perfect day.

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