Painswick

We had one more day with the car so we decided to go south. We booked a table for Sunday Lunch at a pub called the Butcher's Arms in a TINY village called Sheepscombe and took a walk through Painswick below Cheltenham on the Cotswold Way. It has a beautiful church with 100 yew trees in the church yard. They are all different sizes and shapes, it is amazing!

Yew trees in Painswick Church yard.

As I mentioned,  this village is on the Cotswold way and we saw many walkers coming through town. It was quite warm, so many were looking for refreshments.
The Butcher's Arms is a rural 17th century pub reached by very narrow lanes, so says the Good Pub guide, our bible for picking pubs. The Sunday lunch was delicious!  We chose the pork belly, which came with fresh carrots, broccoli, sage stuffing, roasted potatoes, and crackling. Andrew had a real ale, Proper Job and I enjoyed a Pimms cup. This is the only meal we have on Sunday, it is so filling. They use a lot of local fresh ingredients. We weren't going to do dessert, but the server really talked up the ice cream from a local dairy. Three enormous scoops of ginger and honey icecream came in a little glass bowl. It was just outstanding. Long, longwalk tomorrow.

On the way home, stopped at Crickley Hill Country Park, an old iron age.  fort for a walk to start working off that delicious ice cream.

Crickley Hill Country Park lies just a few miles beyond Leckhampton on the Cotswold scarp. It offers wonderful views over the Gloucester Vale as well as 143 acres of grassland and beech woods with a number of trails.

With over 200 species of wild flower, 34 species of butterfly, and a wide range of other invertebrates, Crickley Hill is an excellent area for the study of wildlife and ecology. It is the home of a rare species of the Wall butterfly found mostly on the cliffs in the coastal areas of Britain.

View from Crickley Hill

It is also an important geological as well as archaelogical site with its own Iron Age hillfort. Visitor’s centre is open daily from April to end of Sept. The country park is jointly owned and managed by the National Trust and Gloucestershire County Council.