Hidden Cotswold gems

I offered to take a large awkwardly shaped parcel to the post office for Helena today, and she sensibly suggested going to the new Brimscombe village post office, now run out of the village shop. I could easily park outside the shop, avoiding all the hassles of going to the town centre again.

It was raining again when I finally set off, after adding more layer of gaffer tape to secure the odd corners of the brown paperer package. But by the time I arrived the rain shower had ended and I though I might drive a little further up the Golden Valley towards Chalford. As I reached the car, I looked beside the old post office in a space between buildings in the small parade of shops and there was an Airstream caravan, the sleek shiny aluminium American touring van, which is rather famous. I had seen one in a village only about five miles away last year, so I have a feeling that this one might just have been purchased. I took a few pictures but the location didn't suit a dynamic approach to recording this rare beast.

I then drove to where the Toadsmoor valley, bringing the stream down from Bisley, joins the River Frome and crossed both streams to the south side of the Golden Valley. An ancient trackway leads across the stream, the canal and then under the railway, before ascending steeply diagonally up the wooded hillside to the scattered hamlet of Hyde and and then Minchinhampton. I doubt whether ten cars a day drive up this rutted track, with its potholes and water running down the remnants of the tarmac surface, eroding further the old hollow way in which it is sited. It was like a tunnel through the woods, with tall beech and small hazel trees hanging over the sunken road between its high old woodbanks.

I stopped and clambered over the fence on the top of the woodbank at one accessible point and took pictures down the valley towards Stroud and our hamlet of Bowbridge, about three miles away. I always try to record the views I see as part of my archive of local landscape scenes which often help me understand its history. I came across a remote Georgian clothiers house perched beautifully close to this road with amazing views out to the west. This too was recorded by climbing high up a bank to find a gap in the foliage to give me a wide enough view.

On I went another four hundred yards before meeting another ancient track, forming the old road up from Chalford in the valley bottom up to Minchinhampton, high on the Cotswold plateau and its open common and farm land. I parked to look over the stone wall as I knew there were some rather friendly alpacas who are kept in a steep grass meadow just above this small estate. You can see five of them at the bottom of the picture.

I was pleased to find that the autumn colours were further advanced here as you can see the climbing plant, probably a Virginia creeper, spreading widely over this Cotswold stone estate. It is very typical in shape especially with the gables in the roof. When I first came to this area, I stayed for four months in one of those gable rooms looking out of a similar farm house onto the grazing sheep in the fields.

I don't know the name of this place, nor its origins yet, but I imagine it dates from the seventeenth century boom times that the woollen industry had in this Golden Valley of the River Frome. With the windows facing south and there being so many of them, I think they may well have been a series of cottages where the weavers would have worked up the cloth. They appears now to be several dwellings and the whole building has lost its role as the centre of the community. The four gables, instead of three, are also less common, perhaps developed because the house stretches along contour of the valley and there would have been less room to build in a squarer fashion.

The land slopes down behind the house to the valley bottom a few hundred yards below, where probably the mills at St Mary's belonged to this estate, or one close by. I shall do a bit of research. In the distance up on the left of the picture you can see some modern houses which were built on the opposite or north side of the valley, which gets much more sunshine.

I was also pleased to find some large old stones, which represent some form of marker in the landscape, all covered in mosses and centuries of neglect. I shall tell some friends about these as they may be part of the neolithic stones which are scattered all over this area and not well recorded.

It felt good to be out walking the land again, but rather strange to only have a 50mm prime lens instead of the big zoom I have been in love with recently! It definitely makes light work of it.