The Cotswold Way. Kev Reynolds

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      Kelston Round Hill, from Prospect Stile (Stage 13, Southbound; Stage 1, Northbound)

      The wolds form part of an extensive belt of oolitic limestone that runs from Dorset in the south to Yorkshire in the north. The highest and broadest part of this belt is an undulating tableland, raised on its western side and draining gently towards the east, down to the Thames Valley and the Oxfordshire Plain. On its western side, where the Cotswold Way goes, the scarp slope falls abruptly to the Severn Plain, revealing its most dramatic features. This sharp-edged tableland has long jutting prows and spurs, time-moulded coombes and island-like outliers, plateaus fuzzed with woodlands and a grid of drystone walls.

      Numerous mounds provide evidence of a long history of occupation along the very rim of the escarpment, from which early man scanned the broad views, alert to approaching danger. Today the Cotswold wayfarer seeks those same vantage points as highlights of the walk, places on which to sprawl in the grass and dream among the flowers.

      To read more about the Cotswolds see the list of recommended books in Appendix C.

Geology

      About 180 million years ago, the region now known as the Cotswolds was covered by a warm, shallow sea. On its bed settled the shells of tiny creatures along with sediments of sand and clay. Over untold millennia these sediments were compressed into the oolitic limestone that was pushed up to form the very backbone of the land, and which provided the stone that has since been used for the construction of countless lovely cottages, manor houses and churches, not to mention the long miles of drystone walling seen almost everywhere.

      The Cotswold mass has an eastward tilt, with the sharp face of the escarpment to west and north, and the limestone resting on several thicknesses of soft Lias clays. Thanks to that tilt, natural weathering processes are aided in their slow but steady destruction of the whole area: streams are constantly weakening the scarp slope, the clays slip and overlying rock crumbles without its former support. Thus the scarp has become a corrugation of bays and projecting prows, similar to a coastline, but without the tides of an ocean lapping at its base. Yet even without the wash of tides the scarp is being worn away and pushed further east and south. ‘Outliers’ such as Cam Long Down near Dursley, Bredon Hill near Evesham, and Dundry Hill to the south of Bristol, provide evidence of the former position of the Cotswold scarp and suggest that the wolds once spread throughout the Severn Vale.

      At the end of the last ice age, some 10,000 years ago, the bare bones of the Cotswolds were given a flesh of vegetation. At first, no doubt, the wolds would have been colonised by deciduous woodlands, but in Neolithic times clearings were made and primitive forms of agriculture attempted on the virgin land. With successive generations the open spaces grew until, by the Middle Ages, the Cotswolds were one vast sheep walk. Then the process of agricultural evolution exchanged pasture for arable land and, following the Enclosures smaller fields were created. Now, it appears, the wheels of evolution are turning once more.

Plants and wildlife