Day 9, Tuesday, May 5: Painswick to Middleyard

This morning we started off from Painswick but needed to mail some postcards at this little post office in the village. You can see the red post box in front that is built into the side of the building. Painswick is a lovely Cotswold village with all of its buildings so close together and its narrow winding streets. While we were walking along we were able to look back over the hills and see this view of Painswick village on the top of the hill in the distance.



This is our halfway point! It is a stone marker that states that we have 55 more miles until we get to Bath! Yippee!! But this marker was at the beginning of today's walk....and we still had quite a few hills ahead of us to walk up and down.

We walked through several beautiful ancient forests. This was Standish Wood. It was an ancient forest with the remains of long barrows and round barrows (burial areas dating back to about 3,000 BC). We found a marker along the trail that explained all of these "bumps and lumps" along the way in the forest. The bluebell flowers were everywhere!


Oh, yes, and here are our favorite cows again! We took the wrong trail (there were 3 to choose from) and wound up at this field with the funny cows that look like the pigs we used to have when I was a little girl. But we also found a large picture poster there with an explanation about the cows. The are called Belted Galloways, and they seem to be quite hardy and do very well outside in the wintertime. And, yes, we did turn around and find our way back to the right trail!

For our wonderful grandchildren...do you know the answers to these 2 questions? 1)Do you know the name of the bird that sticks his head out of a clock to tell the time? (We heard him in the woods today.) 2)What is the name of the story about 3 animals who lived in a forest and scared away a little girl? (We walked through this forest today.)

We crossed a busy road in front of the Edgemoor Inn (pub) and came to a sign that advertised the butterflies and wild orchids that inhabited the fields we would be going through. The center photo is of the purple miniature orchids that we found. They were so tiny but very beautiful.

This little building protects an old well that hasn't been used in a long time. But there was an inscription inside on the wall. See if you can read what it says.... The message is a very good one. We found our B&B, Valley Views, at Middleyard near Kings Stanley and are looking forward to a restful sleep!