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#Post#: 266--------------------------------------------------
Snowshill Scramble
By: Griff Grof Date: March 4, 2012, 4:41 am
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A lovely walk, passing 3 Cotswold villages, 24 caches, and here
is a video someone made of it:
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_enq9DMfHEQ
And a review they wrote about it, taken from Geocachetrails.com:
"Let me start by saying this is one of the best trails that I
have ever done, save it for a warm, sunny day, take a picnic and
enjoy it. Fine views, lovely countryside and several fine
examples of Cotswold villages.
For this trail, we parked in the National Trust car park at the
far end of Snowshill, it may be some way from the first cache on
the series but it’s a perfect place to start. From the car park
we enjoyed the walk through the village, passing the village pub
and the church along the way, it is a wonderfully well preserved
Cotswold village.After walking through the village we were soon
on to the Snowshill Scramble trail, no.1 was a nice quick find
to start with. I always love my trips to the Cotswolds and right
from the off I had a very good feeling that series was not going
to disappoint.
From no.1 it was a gentle walk up the road and past a guest
house with painted sheep in the garden and real sheep in the
fields penned in by traditional Cotswold dry stone walling.
After a short walk along the road, we turned onto a track and
were soon out in the Cotswold countryside. We somehow managed to
completely miss a gate or stile onto a footpath and had no way
of getting out of the field, apparently this is quite common
according to a passing horse rider and to prove the point a
mountain biker appeared behind me wondering where she had gone
wrong!
We found our way back onto the correct path and then turned into
the wood where Pip could run off the lead for the first time on
the trip. I had to hang back a bit and let a muggle get ahead
of me, something that I found I had to do quite a bit throughout
the walk; it seemed like the sunny weather had bought everyone
out!
The next section of the trail was up hill and by the time I
reached the top, I was really feeling quite warm and I was a
little out of breath but the reward was some nice view. Another
quick find at the top before entering Lidcombe Wood meant that
at this stage we had found 7 caches .
After picking up the “Twill Surely Rain” cache on the north side
of the wood, we had to double back to pick up the trail through
the wood from the Northwest corner through the South West
corner. It was a gentle downhill trek which was a little
slippery along a sand and stone path.
The peace was quickly shattered by the banging of the hydraulic
ram that is used to power the fountain at Stanway House, I can’t
believe that they can’t make a quieter one! Fortunately the
noise from the pump soon disappeared as we walked along the
bridle way and uphill again. There were more fine views across
the valley and Papermill farm, on the way we passed the outflow
from the pool in Lidcombe Wood that used to feed the former mill
on the Stanway estate.
Eventually, we left the wood and walked down B4077 a short way
before picking up the Cotswold Way National Trail at Stanway. We
passed through a very unusual carved swan kissing gate at the
approach to the village, the first one I’ve seen quite like
this. The sun was shining on it which had brought out the
ladybirds, at least a dozen of them.
Stanway is a lovely village typical of the Cotswold but the 17th
Century Stanway house and neighboring church dominate the
village. We continued through the village and into parkland,
which would be a nice place to stop for lunch but not for us,
although we did have to take a seat to let some very sloooooow
muggles pass us so we could retrieve the cache. Its lovely
parkland and the views got better as we walked up the hill.
We followed the Cotswold Way taking in the fine views until we
reached the village of Stanton another good example of a
Cotswold village, there was also a nice looking pub here that
looked very busy. From Stanton we briefly left the Cotswold way
and embarked on a mile uphill climb, which seemed to go on for
longer but we did get to see some of the best views of the
series.
The final stretches of the trail were all downhill and yes some
more fine views over Snowshill village. This trail took so much
longer than I had planned for several reasons, firstly the
views, which were fantastic, then there were the Cotswold
villages of Snowshill, Stanway & Stanton, which were so
interesting. Thirdly, the muggles, which were so plentiful, the
change in weather had most definitely brought them out and
finally, the tricky hides, of which there were several. Save
this series for a nice day, take a picnic and enjoy it. This is
one the best walks for a while."
Hope you enjoy the walk, can be extended to make it even better!
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