It rained today. Our first rainy day on the Cotswold Way.
And guess what?
It wasn’t terrible.
Listen, Bud, the animals weren’t lining up two by two, if you know what I mean.
It was a proper English rain. Which is to say that it fell politely if insistently.
As though to remind us to don some proper rain gear and get on with our lives.
Listen, they’re having a heat wave of demonic proportions back in GNV! You think I’m going to complain about strolling the English highlands in 60 degrees weather under a little drizzle?
Anyway, today was a big deal.
Today was hump day.
The day there we finally put more CW miles behind us than in front of us.
Listen, I can almost see Bath from atop any of the hills we kept climbing up and then climbing down again.
Or at least I could see Bath if the rain hadn’t limited visibility.
Today’s good omen: The first CW post with a distance to Bath (end of the CW) on it. Meaning we were at least headed in the right direction.
Today’s bad omen: A sinister siren-like apparition that beckoned me from the open second story window of a stone barn. All the while holding out a rose or some other sort of enticement.
As though trying to lure me in.
But like Ulysses lashed to the mast, I resisted.
Once again we traversed many and varied landscapes.
And we saw cows.
And we stumbled upon ancient monoliths that seemed to hold the key to unlocking tantalizing secrets that were long ago lost to modern man’s comprehension.
This is ostensibly a geological survey marker.
Or is it a signaling device for the alien starships that landed here long ago to build things that we mere mortals were obviously incapable of building for ourselves.?
I just report. You decide.
This is my daughter Jenny on a bridge.
Upper left: That’s my daughter Jenny crossing the bridge.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
One of the cool things about the Cotswold Way is the way the trail periodically narrows in order to unobtrusively thread its way through houses and gardens that are barely an arms length apart.
Another ancient alien starship-summoning device perhaps.
Which may or may not be still sending out homing signals?
Flowers. But how can we know for sure that they really are of earthly origin given all the stranger things that I’ve witnessed today?
Oh yeah, and we walked through this field in the rain on our way to Kings Stanley, our day’s end destination.
We were headed for King’s Head Pub for a pint and a snack. But upon arrival we found that the pub had gone out of business.
So we had to walk several more blocks to the next nearest cafe…
…only to discover that there were no pints to be had.
Which is how I ended up having a Coke Zero to celebrate the end of a splendid hiking day.
Which somehow seemed an unsatisfying conclusion. But there it is.
My stats.
Tomorrow: What they really don’t want you to know about Wotton-under-Edge.
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