Day Seventeen

Monday 13 December – Cheltenham to Gloucester

Cheltenham has been a spa resort since the discovery of mineral springs there in 1716. The spa waters continue to be taken recreationally at Pittville Pump Room, built for this purpose and completed in 1830. The railway station (which my overnight stopping place was almost part of) is still called Cheltenham Spa. The city is also well-known for horse-racing – there is a friendly invasion of Irish racegoers every Spring for the Gold Cup meeting – and a clutch of cultural festivals. I had seen a little of the Georgian and Regency architecture in the Montpelier district the previous evening, but today I headed South West out of town.

The rush hour traffic was in full cry, and as soon as possible I escaped from main roads on to a back street leading, I thought, to a footbridge over the railway. When I reached the end of a cul-de-sac, no bridge. But the milk of human kindness flowed. As I explained my predicament to a chap having a fag in a front garden, and he tried to remember where he'd seen a footbridge in the vicinity, the disembodied voice of a woman carried across the road. Actually she had a body, or at least a top half. How she had overheard our conversation I have no idea, but she was leaning out of a first-floor window, giving me directions to the bridge. With this help I was soon on my way.

After a 15-minute skirmish with the semis of Up Hatherley, I turned on to a bridleway leading Westwards, my rough direction for most of this walk. The way was clear at first, then became indistinct. I blundered around for a few minutes but, as soon as I had worked out my position relative to the traffic noise (from the M5) I was able to find the exit from a field on to a road which went over the motorway. This was swathed in fog, as was the countryside beyond it.

The day was mild, and the sun had being trying valiantly to break through a pall of thin cloud over Cheltenham. But the fog was too much for it. Rugby posts loomed eerily out of the gloom. I had a few seconds' difficulty distinguishing the path from a bikers' dirt track, but I soon found the tunnel I was seeking beneath the railway.

Cheltenham and Gloucester are separated by a shared green(ish) belt of flat farm land. I had left the Cotswolds behind by now; I could see no hills in any direction.

Once I had followed a cycle track beneath the A40, I was walking around the perimeter of Gloucestershire Airport, a bustling place indeed. That bit is a lie; there was no sign of any activity whatsoever, let alone any actual flying. Distressingly, what seemed to be the wreckage of a small plane had been dumped a few feet from the fence, as an awful warning, perhaps, to pilots and passengers.

After crossing a road, I was walking alongside Hatherley Brook, across as golf course which straddled the brook. There was no getting away from it; despite some extensive tree planting, this was a very boring golf course, and not a very exciting walk. There were golfers out playing, making the most of the warmer weather, with another cold snap gleefully threatened by Carol for the end of the week. I was jolly glad to quit the course for a relatively thrilling stretch of path past a sewage works.

Interestingly (well, I was desperate), some two hours after quitting Up Hatherley on the outskirts of Cheltenham, I was now in the vicinity of Down Hatherley. Just past the sewage works, I turned left (South) for a first flirtation with the suburbs of Gloucester. Innsworth is just houses, and I left it again almost immediately, following a scruffy, unmade road, and hopping over a stile into my last few fields for the day.

I stopped by a kissing gate for a snack, and got into conversation with a woman walking her own dog and one belonging to her neighbour. We exchanged notes on our experiences of walking. She and her husband liked to go off b&b-ing, but found this more difficult because of the dog. My reference-librarian instincts prompted me to whip out the netbook and try to get a wifi connection so that I could help her find dog-friendly b&bs, but I resisted this temptation. We parted with mutual hopes for a happy Christmas.

Entering Longford, I set about getting to the city centre with as little time as possible spent on main roads. I accomplished this well, walking for nearly a mile along a quiet back street. As I rounded a slight bend, I was suddenly confronted by the sight of the absurdly-high tower of Gloucester Cathedral. I though how mind-boggling, intimidating even, this edifice must have been when it first started to loom over the house. But actually the buildings I could see around me were not much higher than their Mediaeval equivalents, hence the effect the cathedral still has.

I passed another place of reverence, the rugby stadium, before passing under the railway and into the centre. I had a little time for tourist activity (and lunch) before my train back to London, so I went past the Cathedral and made for the docks.

It seems rather strange to reflect that Gloucester, such a long way up the Severn, was a thriving port, thanks to the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, which allowed larger ships to reach Gloucester's docks than would have been possible on the tidal Severn. At the docks, cargo was unloaded from the sea-going vessels and loaded on to narrow boats for onward transport using the inland waterways network. Like many dock areas, the buildings and infrastructure fell into disrepair when transport methods changed, and were renovated starting in the 1980s. One huge warehouse was destroyed by fire in the late 90s, and rebuilt using the original bricks. Today, the warehouses are host to the National Waterways Museum, a range of retail opportunities, and some cafes. one of which did well as a lunch stop.

I wandered back through the city's not-unpleasant shopping centre to the railway station, bringing this short day's walk, and this year's East-West walking, to an end. Next up, all being well, in January I shall walk through the Forest of Dean into South Wales.

Below is the state of the walk at the year's end: