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Costwolds Walking Tour

I am planning a two-week walking tour of the Costwolds and am looking for good guidebook with walking routes/maps between villages. I've seen several on Amazon but I don't have any way to choose one over another. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Posted by
10344 posts

Two thoughts:1. Go to Amazon.com/UK website to get a bigger selection and see if you can "search inside the pages" of any of the Amazon selections; and print out names of likely ones. Then, 2. See if any of those titles are "in the store" at your local Borders and Barnes & Noble, so that you can go there and browse the pages to see which you like bestThere's probably 100 books on this because the British are avid walkers and you're sure going to have fun walking in the Cotswolds!

Posted by
3580 posts

At the Travelers' Information centers in the Cotswolds there are books and leaflets describing the walks. There are walks between the towns, so whichever town you are in you can walk to another town a few miles away. The Cotswold Way is a long walk running many miles thru the Cotswolds; its northern end is in Chipping Campden. I think the Way ends in Bath.

Posted by
5 posts

The Ordinance Survey Explorer maps provide good detail for walking. They are difficult, if not impossible to obtain in the US, but they are carried by many bookshops, large and small, in the UK. OL 45 is a good start.

Posted by
10344 posts

Ahhhh, Greg, another admirer of OL 45! When I first drove in the Cotswolds, I noticed on OL 45 that the roads to the smallest villages, roads that were paved that is, were either orange or yellow; and when I looked at the legend on OL 45, I saw that orange means "road generally more than 4 m wide" and yellow means "roads generally less than 4 m wide". Before I actually saw the roads I thought to myself, I haven't seen that differentiation on American roadmaps -- how many roads could there be less than 4 m wide? I sure found out. The roads less than 4 m wide got very interesting when a lorry is coming in the opposite direction. A good time to know what the button is that retracts the side view mirrors.