Broadway and Saintbury

Broadway from Willersey Hill

In Broadway for a weekend of birthday celebrations, our first act was a walk. This one starts, delightfully, behind the public toilets in the public car park. Or in fact it didn't because the car park is being redeveloped, so our first challenge was to find our way round to where the path could be picked up.

You head east out of the village and cross the A44 by an underpass and head up to a pair of paths at the base of Willersey Hill. We started to lose faith in the walk description at this point: "where the track bears right, leave it and go through a gate ..." actually meant "walk straight ahead to reach a gate, ignoring a crossing track".

A bit further on, the path came out into a large grassy hillside (seen from the top in the photo above). Here we had a crisis of confidence and added a good mile to the walk by heading south east rather than northeast. However, we eventually got back on course having had a close encounter with Farncombe House, a Georgian mansion now a company headquarters.

The route then took us past a golf course, across a road and into a field of mainly black sheep, some very newly-born.


At the end of the field, the tower of Saintbury church came into view ...


The plain beyond put us strongly in mind the Somerset landscape we have often walked in - especially the view from Brent Knoll.

After a quite steep and slippery descent we had a closer look at St Nicholas's church which has early Norman elements, a 13th / 14th century tower and a 14th century chancel (Pevsner).


The walk description alerted us to this relief over the south doorway. Pevsner describes it as an early sundial, the walk description as a "mass dial".


The website of the British Sundial Society (!) explains that the gnomon (the bit of a sundial that casts a shadow) is always missing in mass dials and that this type of dial is more an event marker than a means of telling the time. I am afraid it all remains a bit opaque.

The route back to the A44 across the fields was negotiated without difficulty and thereafter we retraced our steps to return to our hotel.

From: Country walks around Broadway (Cotswold Voluntary Wardens).

Map: Explorer OL45 (The Cotswolds).

Conditions: dry, sunny, but a threat of rain.

Distance: officially 4 miles, but we managed to turn it into 5.5 or so.

Rating: three and a half stars. Lovely views.


Flower of the day

This striking blue Germander Speedwell.