The North Downs Way - Guildford to Gomshall

Well....Me and Mr Plum headed off to the start of the North Downs Way on Saturday and walked from Farnham to Guildford! The North Downs are beautiful ... mile after mile of beautiful rolling English countryside. We stopped off in Seale for a lovely cup of tea and piece of cake. This leg of the walk was 10 miles ... by the time we reached our B&B we were absolutely shattered! We managed to eat and then collapsed! I actually slept for 11 hours! Ha Ha Ha! But that's not all ... on Sunday we headed into Guildford for a yummy Full English breakfast at House Of Fraser and then started on the next leg of the walk ... 8 miles to Gomshall!! As you can imagine, we are both feeling a bit sore today!

I hope that you have all had lovely Bank Holiday Weekends!!

The Cotswold Way Part 1 - Chipping Camden to Broadway - 6 miles

This was the first leg of The Cotswold Way – a national trail of about 100 miles stretching from Chipping Camden to Bristol.

I won't go into huge detail about the actual route of the walk – if you want to do the trail yourself, there are plenty of websites where you can download maps, routes etc. Here are some points of interest I spotted on the walk.

Dovers Hill
This was the site of many family picnics and adventures when I was younger.  This is also the venue for the Olimpick Games!

Meon Hill
Legend has it that the Devil stood on top of the hill and kicked a boulder towards Evesham Abbey. There are lots of local tales and legends about this hill.

We did the walk on the first hot and sunny day for what seems like months! This was good as it meant that the farmers could get out and finish the harvest.  

Broadway Tower

Another venue for family picnics and birthday parties. We stopped here for a lovely ploughman's, cup of tea and glass of locally produced apple juice!

Broadway itself was much prettier than I remembered – but of course as this was August Holiday - and sunny, it was full of tourists! Unfortunately (although, fortunate for my bank balance) my walking boots meant that I was not able to go inside any of the lovely shops there!

The walk took us about 3 hours, at a leisurely pace. The walk from Chipping Camden to Dovers Hill is quite steep, but the rest of the walk is quite even until the walk down hill into Broadway.