First Day of Summer: Walking The Cotswold Way

 

There's something about the first genuinely warm morning of summer that makes you want to do something worthy of it. That's how we found ourselves setting out from Broadway, the Cotswold Way stretching ahead of us and the sun already pressing warm against our backs before we'd even found our stride.

The path rises steadily out of the village, and almost immediately the world opens up. Sheep were scattered across the fields we crossed, heads down, intent on the serious business of grazing. There's a sound sheep make — that soft, determined rip-and-tear of grass — that you don't really notice until the countryside is quiet enough to let you hear it. On that morning it seemed like the whole hillside was making a kind of steady, earthy music.

Lower down, where a small stone bridge carries the path over a stream, we came across lambs standing ankle-deep in the cool water, cooling themselves in the shade. Their calls were thin and bright in the still air, quite different from the deeper, more settled voices of their mothers. I've heard that sound all my life and it still stops me.

Above us, a kestrel held its position in the blue — that extraordinary stillness they manage, hovering on the wind as though pinned to the sky. From somewhere across the valley, dogs barked intermittently, as if the countryside needed reminding it had edges.

We climbed through a succession of kissing gates, each one opening onto a slightly wider view. Villages tucked into folds in the land. Fields rolling away in long, gentle waves. The sky an unblemished blue that felt almost too good to be true on the first day of June.

Halfway up, we stopped beneath a tree and were grateful for it. The shade felt like a small mercy. The world around us shimmered quietly, unhurried, as if entirely content simply to exist on such a morning.

We didn't reach the tower. The heat had other ideas, and we turned back before the final rise of the hill. Broadway Tower remained up there somewhere, doing perfectly well without us.

But here's the thing — it didn't matter in the slightest. The walk had already given us everything it had to offer: a morning held in warm sunlight, the soft chorus of sheep and lambs, kissing gates opening onto wider skies, and the simple, uncomplicated pleasure of walking side by side through a landscape that asked for nothing but our attention.

Some days, that's quite enough.