I like to take long walks occasionally and I do not like the
idea of paying for overnight accommodation, porterage and such, so I wild camp
and carry everything on my back. But it’s heavy and seems to become heavier as
the days progress. That’s why for some years now I have been incubating this
idea of pulling my camping gear behind me rather than hefting it on my back. I
tried various solutions without success. Then I made a lucky find. Someone in a
rather rich area near my flat in Oxford had thrown away a used golfing trolley.
I adapted it and this contraption with the luggage bag or box (a slightly modified
modern grass box from an electric mower) plus flexibly attached and also
modified haversack became known to me as the trolley. Now I could carry a much
bigger tent and have a go at a walk I have often fancied: the Cotswold Way.
So, at the end of August in 2023, I struggled onto a very
busy train from Oxford with my trolley and travelled to Bath, the southern end
of the Way. It seemed to take forever extricating myself from the city but I
did it and ended that first day in a camping spot beyond a rusty gate just to
the north of Hinton near a massive manure heap and a wood. As I erected the
tent a car parked in the rusty gate entranceway! I could not believe it. Who
could it be? The owners of the field? Officers of the Stop Wild Camping
Brigade? Lovers? Everything was already wet from the rain soaked grass so I had
no choice but to continue making camp. By the time I’d finished it was almost
dark, so I took my torch to the gate and waved it about a bit. A light came on
in the car and the driver’s window was lowered. A youngish woman said, “Sorry,
is this your gate?”
“Not exactly”, I replied as she quickly reversed and sped
off, away from Hinton. I walked in the other direction in the near darkness to
Hinton’s only pub, the Bull. It had beer, but no food so I dined on salted
peanuts. No breakfast the next day either as I towed the trolley alongside the
M4 then crossed it to the village of Tormarton. Its pub had closed down, so on
again to Old Sodbury where in a pub called The Dog I had a much needed sausage,
egg and chips.
By this time I had developed a hatred of styles, kissing gates
and all of the things that blocked my way along the Cotswold Way: they are not
made for walkers with trolleys. However, that night I made it to Hawkesbury
Upton where lay my perfect pub: the Beaufort Arms. Perfect with one exception,
the otherwise friendly landlord did not provide tasters of the real ales he
purveyed. “You can buy a half or a pint,” he told me bluntly – and he had good
reason for his rule. Had a good dinner of faggots and mash then returned to my
camp in a corner of the local football field.
Hygiene when wild camping is always a problem, but I did
manage a refreshing wash down the next day in a very cold stream. I then
sweated my way up Wortley Hill, which overlooks Wotton under Edge. But there
was a reward for my efforts: the first good views of the Severn Valley with
that wide river shimmering in the distance beside my ancestral home: Berkeley.
A long trek then to North Nibley Monument with its even more
panoramic views and onwards to Dursley where I drank in the Old Spot, lost my
boots, and had great difficulty finding a wild camping site. Next and last day
I made it to Stroud in my sandals and took a three bus trip to Stow on the Wold
having completed about half of the Cotswold Way’s one hundred odd miles. There
I parked my trolley in the garage ready for an assault on the other half of
that beautiful, but challenging footpath.
(This is a much abbreviated version of my notes. If you want
the whole story email me.)
