A sleepy noon in Coleshill, with a pure blue sky spread across this quiet corner of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds.
First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window
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National Trust-maintained Coleshill couldn’t be more gorgeous if it tried, a village and church of beautiful purple-grey stone. ’We’re not in Kansas now, Toto,’ myself said to me as I passed the mellow old Radnorshire Arms, the village green and Estate Office, and set out across the green acres of Coleshill Park. Every newly planted oak boasted its own hand-built wooden cattle guard, and the cattle themselves lazily chomped under spreading trees. A couple in pot sunhats, reclining under an ancient oak with their picnic hamper, completed this Rousseau landscape of peace and plenty.
A rusty outmoded harrow like a troll’s bedsprings lay in the hedge. Old overshot hazels sprouted from their coppiced boles in the skirts of Flamborough Wood. I followed a lane rubbly with chunks of red brick and pale limestone between the pasture fields to Great Coxwell – another immaculate collection of colour-washed houses, some under thatch, along a narrow street.
Out at the edge of the village I came to the Great Barn. A name to live up to, a drum-roll of a name. The barn was built of creamy stone in the 13th century to store the produce of a grange or outlying farm of Beaulieu Abbey. I stood and watched it sail on its duckpond reflection – a ship of the harvest bulwarked with gabled doorways and spread aloft with intricate timbering that upheld a huge roof of stone.
Two buzzards went planning over the bluebell clump at the crest of Badbury Hill as I approached the old hill fort. Its ramparts have been partially ploughed in the couple of millennia since it was last inhabited, but the sections that lay in the shelter of the trees stood tall enough to distinguish. A family was picnicking in the fort, their children playing on a rope swing that whirled them away from the ramparts to fly in a circular swoop out over the ditch and back to earth again.
The dappled light under the sycamores gave way to full sunshine and a tremendous view north across the wide valley of the upper Thames. Was this the prospect that greeted King Arthur when he brought his British forces to contest mastery of the kingdom with Anglo-Saxon invaders some time around 500 AD? Some say that Badbury is the ‘Mount Badon’ of semi-legend, site of the siege at which Arthur slew 960 foes with his own sword Excalibur, securing peace in Britain for a generation.
Ahead of me a little lad went trailing his family on the path to Brimstone Farm and Coleshill. Something of the stirring old story was running in his imagination, judging by the way he swung his plastic Excalibur and laid armies of nettle-heads low in the dust.
Start & finish: Radnor Arms PH, Coleshill, Oxfordshire SN6 7PR (OS ref SU 237938)
Getting there
Bus: Service 65 (swindonbus.info), Witney-Swindon
Road: M4 (Jct 15); A419, A361 to Highworth; B4019 (signed ‘Faringdon’) to Coleshill
Walk: (6½ miles, easy, OS Explorer 170): Leaving Radnor Arms, right downhill. Left opposite church (‘village shop’); in 150 m, pass Estate Office notice; on through 2 gates (236936; yellow arrows/YA). Follow path across fields of Coleshill Park (stiles, YAs). In ¾ mile, bear left (246930; YA) along edge of Flamborough Wood. At Ashen Copse Farm cross track (250934); ahead past barn (YA). Diagonally right across 2 fields (stiles, YAs) to track (255934); follow this round right bend; on between fields. Near Great Coxwell, cross stiles (264934; YA) and on. At field end follow ‘Footpath To River’; in 30 m, left over stile to road (268933). Left up village street for nearly ½ mile; then right (269940; fingerpost) past Great Barn. Over stile; right (YA, ‘Circular Route’) round field edge. In 250 m, right through kissing gate (266941; ‘Circular Route’); follow path to cross B4019 (264945). Left on path parallel to road inside field (National Trust arrow). At field end, forward through car park (262945). Ahead through gate (‘Badbury Clump’); follow path ahead beside fort ramparts; on for ¾ mile, down slope (ahead over cross-tracks), out of trees (256951), forward to Brimstone Farm. Cross farm lane (251952; YA); take track ahead through gates past left end of cattle yard. In 30 m, left (YA) over stile, through woodland belt, then across 2 fields (YAs, stiles) and along green lane. Through end of Fern Copse (244945); on for ½ mile to road (237940). Left; fork immediately right to Radnor Arms.
Radnor Arms (237938) – path through Coleshill Park – corner of Flamborough Wood (246930). Ashen Copse Farm (250934) – path east for 1 mile to Great Coxwell (268933). Great Barn (269940) – corner of woodland (266941) – cross B4019. Badbury Hill – path through Coxwell Wood to Brimstone Farm (251952). Path SW for 1 and a quarter miles, passing end of Fern Copse (244945) to Coleshill.
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Lunch: Radnor Arms, Coleshill (01793-861575; radnorarmscoleshill.co.uk) – busy, friendly, cosy.
Great Barn: Great Coxwell (NT): Open daily (50p entrance)
Information: Faringdon TIC (01367-242191); www.visitsouthoxfordshire.co.uk
Readers’ Walks: Come and enjoy a country walk with our experts! Dates, info etc.: http://www.mytimesplus.co.uk/travel/uk/1867/times-walks. Next walks: Holy Island, Northumberland, 13 May; Tibbie Shiels Inn, Scottish Borders, 10 June; Northern Ireland, 8 July
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