3/6/19 - Broadway to the Tower and exploring Cleeve Hill

This will be possibly the last day with decent weather while we are in the Cotswolds, so we went walking again. 

The Tower near Broadway sounded interesting and the town of Broadway itself seemed much less touristy.  (Maybe that is because the weekend is over and kids are back at school) 

There is a 6.5 km walk from the town  up to the tower on a hill above and back down again. 

View looking across one of the fields we walked in.

We decided to try to park in the close -in town car park and when we got there the sing on the gate said that the parking machine was broken and parking would be free until it was replaced.  We were feeling lucky already. 

As we walked in to the town centre through narrow malls and alleys we passed a coffee shop (the Leaf and Bean) advertising that they had barrista made coffee and 40 different teas.  This sounded promising, so we stopped and had a drink and light lunch before we started the walk. It was good.

The start of the walk was at the war memorial (virtually right in front of the Leaf and Bean), so once again it was very easy to find. It started with a stroll up the main street, where we admired the beautiful Cotswold cottages and gardens as we passed. 

Then we were through an alley way and through the first of many kissing gates and into the fields.

At the outskirts of town we found this sign with the pretty flowers planted beneath it. 

These large stone gate posts were at the start of a long uphill track that we followed

 This was the building just past the stone gate posts above - very unusual. They seemed to have built in a set of steps at the front of the building.

We wondered what a two-in-one gate would look like - here it is from both sides. In the top picture the small gate is open

We shared the fields with the sheep as we walked.  They seem to self shed and the fleece is very fibrous.  The partly grown lambs have mostly black lower legs and look as though they are wearing stockings.

The sheep seem to ignore the stunning distant views, but enjoy the long lush green grass. Do their jaws ever stop moving. 

As we climbed higher we came to some very fancy places on the hill, which we admired as we walked past.  We were pretty impressed with this large stag statue at the end of a mown grassy gap.

Considering how crowded in most people seem to be here this looked like quite a luxury.

Eventually we came out at the top of the hill to find a cafe, a carpark and the tower. Apparently you can see 13 counties (and also Wales) from the top of the tower.

You can also see the herd of deer. 

 The green sign was the one we were following today but it shared the footpath with the Cotswold way (a long range walking track) for some of the way back down towards town from the tower.

We stopped at a convenient seat part way down to enjoy the views

and I finally managed to capture a reasonable picture of these tiny yellow flowers which  move in the slightest breeze.

Down into town again and we once again admired the buildings (are they real???)

 and noticed that the Lloyds mobile bank is now open for business.

We stopped at the same coffee place for more refreshments (including icecream) before heading homewards.

After a bit of relaxation time Trevor and I decided to explore some of the close areas to the house, so we headed out again briefly.  It certainly felt like the climb was more than the 108m shown on Strava.  We had terrific views down over Cheltenham and across to Wales and met some runners on their training run who run to the top of Cleeve Hill as part of their route.

We started off following a track/road but soon deviated up into the hills.  If we had kept on going we would have ended up at this small collection of buildings.

Old quarry that tempted us up the hill

 Old windlass that still worked.

At times it seemed like we were on the edge of the world.

Tree growing out of the side of a cliff!

Distant views across the hills

old farming equipment.

There is a golf course on the top of these hills,  I'm not sure what the sheep think about it.

Runners heading for their goal

Distant views on zoom of Sudeley Castle from the top of the hill.

Our place as we headed back down at the end of our walk.

We tried out the local Rising Sun Hotel for tea tonight  - it is part of the Greene King chain of hotels with quite acceptable food at a good price. The shiraz from Chile didn't inspire us to try any more wine from there.