Great Cotswold Walk: Central loop

The Great Cotswold Walk, 132 caches, 23 miles, Quenington, Glos  

Hello!

It's been a few weeks, I know! We haven't had an internet connection for a fortnight and so I've only been able to update the blog today now that we have it back. I've set the date and time of this post to 17th Feb which is when I completed the Great Cotswold Walk.

Here's one final reminder of how we've split the walk before I begin my review of the Central loop:

GCW Central, 62 caches, 10 miles (1-37 and 71-93 + a couple of others) 

Once again, we had chosen a beautiful, sunny day to find more of the GCW caches. With the North and South loops having set standards so high, we had great expectations for this final section, and we were glad to get going early; in fact, the lanes we walked along at the beginning were extremely icy, and Fizz the geodog nearly slipped a few times (as did we!).

We were enjoying a walk through lovely open countryside to begin with. The caches were straight forward finds, and it was great to see some more snowdrops - we really can't wait for Spring!

Snowdrops - we've seen a few along the other GCW rings as well!

We were taken through some lovely little villages and hamlets, before the views really opened out. In fact, we feel that this loop had the best views out of the three, and they were made all the better under the sunshine. Unfortunately, we had to miss a cache out since farm workers were managing the hedge lines - hopefully the cache wasn't picked up amongst all those logs and twigs!

Views - even more beautiful when you're there! 

The time flew by as more caches were found. It was nice to walk through the lovely hamlet of Ablington again. We walked past an old tithe barn; can't remember the date it was built but it was sometime in the eighteenth century.

Old tithe barn in Ablington

A few caches later we were in in Bibury, a pretty Cotswold village which was filled with tourists - even today, a Tuesday, in February! I think it's neat how the route took you through Bibury as it's an iconic Cotswold village, so it just makes the series feel even more 'Cotswold'. We actually diverted slightly to find the cache in the heart of the village and to take some photos of the River Coln. We decided that there wasn't time to go to Arlington Row to see if the yellow car was still parked there!

The River Coln in Bibury 

The final stretch of the walk was fantastic, since we were walking alongside the Coln again, having done so on both the South and North loops. The river was just as beautiful today, idyllic, in fact.

Home stretch - the Coln one last time

All too soon, we were back in Quenington, where we had started the series just under a month ago. 26 miles and 133 caches later, we've completed possibly the best 'power trail' in the country. A very memorable series; whilst there aren't any elevated views, the route is beautiful in another way. The stretches along the river were wonderful, the settlements we passed through were lovely, and there was plenty of wildlife to be seen - overall, the area was mostly quiet and pretty much untouched.

The caches were all there to be found, which is just what you want with a series like this. We had five DNFs, but only where there were too many muggles to search or where the cache was clearly missing following DNFs before us.

To conclude: it really is a Great Cotswold Walk.

Griff Grof