This will be a short post, as I’ve heard that brevity is the soul of wit (Hamlet).
It’s a long time between Christmas and Easter this year. Too long. It got to the point where both Julie and I were getting run down, so we planned an impromptu break to the Cotswolds and Stratford upon Avon - Shakespeare country! We found a cute little cottage called the Old Dairy, complete with it’s own massive cheese press in the bedroom - thankfully it hadn’t been used for some while so the aroma of maturing cheddar did not linger.
Whenever we have a stay-cation there’s always the looming agenda of which county to visit, and whether we can run up the highest point. We’ve done pretty well so far, and there was no reason to think Warwickshire would be any different. We originally planned to run up the county top for Gloucestershire as well, but sacked off the idea before we even left Cambridge.
After an afternoon wandering the streets of Stratford, encountering many a fool (and ice cream), we headed to our cottage in Cleeve Prior perched on the edge of the Cotswolds. We got ready on Saturday morning with a tasty bacon sandwich, packed up, and drove to the sandstone village of Mickleton. Already we had made our first error, by not planning a suitable parking spot, so we drove up the hill to Hidcote Gardens. Thankfully we had become officially “old” 2 weeks previous and brought a National Trust membership, win! Depressingly, our planned route would take us on a 7-mile circuit back to the car before we even reached the hill summit. We were going to have to literally run right past our car for another mile before we could get back to the comfort of clean clothes.
We ran down, down, down, down, down, down, right to the bottom of the hill into Mickleton. Yay - what goes down must come up again. By this point of the day, around lunchtime, the sun was relentlessly beating down on us with little or no shade. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ (Sonnet 18). Another error, we hadn’t thought to pack any sunscreen, it’s March! We set off along the Heart of England way, across fields of rape (the plant silly), then round the base of Meon Hill, complete with a fort on top (not that we could see it though). Sadly whatever remains were on the summit were inaccessible as it was on private land. Nevertheless we continued across farmer’s fields, full of the year’s first lambs frolicking in the sunshine.
There’s a very curious feature about the landscape in Warwickshire, which we could only speculate was the result of intense farming practises back in ye olden days. Long trenches and furloughs followed the gradient of the hill in lines across the fields. Of course, these rollers made for natural BMX-style jumps, so of course we obliged. A superman, a 360˚ - the latter was my next error. Running, jumping and rotating in the air is not my forte, and I almost certainly twisted something. Fool. On we plodded along the Monarch’s way, under the beating sun, with little chance of respite - Warwickshire is not a woody county it seems. As we approached Admington, my knee was causing too much pain so we took a little rest to stretch out and recover. Thankfully in my haste I had taken a wrong turning that led to a wee short cut, and stopped us having to run along the side of a fast country lane. Over the road we crossed, back onto the Monarch’s way for the final ascent back to Hidcote gardens, and the eventual final stretch to the summit. A curious large stone marker was placed at the base of hill - with ‘Ticket’ carved into it. Up the hill we climbed, at times steep, but always constant, on and on it continued for 2 kilometres (not vertically, obvs), through fields and copse, always with the company of lambs. Finally we arrived at the carpark - … miles into the run, only to turn away and up, up , up to the final summit. Climbing up a rutted farm track, still no ounce of shade. Finally we reached the final rise, past the trig point (sadly not the true summit), only to be confronted by an obnoxious cyclist pissing on the path - idiot. There was no great monument to mark the highest point in Warwickshire, just an innocuous corner of a ploughed field.
We took a couple of photos, lamented the lack of any skulls for Shakespeare inspired poses, and made our way back to the car. Our reward? A clotted cream tea. Yum, and thoroughly well earned.
An injury. Near-sun stroke. Running back to the car before even reaching the summit. Some might call it a comedy of errors, but it was all assuaged with one simple cream tea. We have seen better days (Timon of Athens).
p.s. On a side note, we finally brought a tent, which means I get to trot out my favourite Shakespeare-camping mash-up. “Now is the winter of our discount tents” - ha ha ha. So funny.
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