The old track leading uphill from Painswick Mill

On my way to Gloucester I drove on a back road to nearby Painswick. I wanted to drop off some more programmes for the Stroud Film Festival, which starts in early March, at the Painswick Hotel. I was reminded of it when I read a second positive review of its restaurant's lunchtime menu by Jay Rayner in The Observer. I thought I would check out what the menu looked like,  but sadly the rather elegant converted old Cotswold stone manor house was being 'refreshed' in their words. I shall return.

On the old road along the Painswick stream's valley I saw a small track leading across the valley and stopped to take a short stroll. I soon realised that behind the large hedge was the old Painswick Mill, with its pond sited just above it. Adjacent to the pond were Spring Cottage and Mill Pond Cottage which rather gave the game away. Unfortunately the whole area has been rather transformed into a wealthy backwater with less than traditional amendments to the structures, which didn't attract me at all.

I walked over the stream where the road became an earthen track and ambled up the hillside leaving the houses behind. Within a short distance I was back in the past and the landscape of farmland and woods returned. I was struck by this point, just after where the track turned through ninety degrees. This space opened out and the old and rather too overgrown track continues up the hill, and a new track had been cut beside it in the adjacent field. Another footpath is indicated by formal signs leading off to the right of the picture. This was once a cross road.

The old track was certainly important as it was large enough for a horse and cart and probably herds of animals. I think it was a part of the droving road system which crossed these valleys to link the farms of Wales with their markets in the south of England, long before any road or canal or rail could move the food to the cites.

I could see interesting indicators of ancient landscapes just in this spot. Stumps of trees in ancient hedgerows. Trees in the middle of fields. Old clumps of coppiced hazel indicating the edges of old managed woodland. I 'm always intrigued by such discoveries and now I want to return here to continue walking up the track and see where it leads to, both physically and metaphorically.