Action station: walking the Cotswolds from our village base

Walkers are Welcome is a network of towns and villages that make excellent holiday hubs. Winchcombe, with ‘an appealing amount of Cotswoldiness’ is a perfect example

On a sunny day, on a hike in the Cotswold foothills, we stumble upon walking royalty. In the graveyard of Dumbleton’s Norman church, there he is: Patrick Leigh Fermor. A man who, in the 1930s, strode from Holland to the Bosphorus. Scanning his headstone’s Greek inscription in the oh-so-English countryside, we’re awed, humbled, envious. Though also aware that you don’t have to trek quite that far for a satisfying journey.

On our own five-day, car-free trip to Gloucestershire, my partner and I have walked almost 100 miles – and gotten nowhere. But we’ve found, among other things, a neolithic tomb, a wife of Henry VIII, a lot of birds and, now, a travel writing legend.