July 20 – Didn’t want to leave our cool and spacious room over the gastro-pub this morning. We lingered over a fantastic breakfast chatting with the chef before beginning our penultimate hiking day. The chef spends his summers here, then travels to Japan in the winter to teach snowboarding. He reminded us of Christopher. Nice life! Eleven miles today, still sunny and warm.

We stopped into the church of St. Mary Magdalene, and I was thrilled to see memorial poems on the walls. Usually, I love finding interesting tombstones, but with the sandstone used universally here, any writing over a hundred years or so is no longer legible.

The church had a sign about the Ceysell Brass from 1493, and we looked high and low but could not find it.

I looked down and lifted a corner of the rug and voila! There it was!

We approached another little town at lunchtime, that had a similar church, St. Peters, and a similar brass. This one was open for all to see.

We ate our lunch in the church cemetery – cool and shady. There were formal gardens below, with lots of tourists strolling about.

I promised myself to stop showing hillsides and pastorals, but this is our penultimate day, so here are some penultimate cows.

By mid afternoon we arrived at Hill Farm B&B, where we had been warned by our travel agent that there were no rooms available, so we would be sleeping in “the shepherd’s hut.” It sounded quaint, but turned out to be a teeny tiny trailer with a corrugated metal roof out in the hot sun. It was REALLY hot inside, with no fan or way to make a cross-breeze. The host was not home, but left us a note to make ourselves comfortable. Ha!

We showered in the tiny bathroom, but started to sweat as soon as we emerged. Our host had left us one bottle of water, with instructions not to drink the water that came from the tap. We were dehydrated and overheated. We’re gonna die!

I went outside looking for any shady place, and found a lovely covered patio with a cool breeze at the top of the hill. We retired there with our books and waited for our host to return. When she did, she assured us that the hut would cool down in the evening, and she was right. This is a self catering B&B, so we heated our lasagna dinners in our tiny microwave, and ate outside at our tiny table.

Here’s to the Cotswold Way!