Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire Ways

Sunday 18 September: Bicester to Westcote (31 miles). Sunny with showers. After spending some time with Robin and Debbie, last seen in Venice in June 2009, I walk into Bicester and on to Kirtlington where I left the Oxford Canal yesterday. Here the Oxfordshire Way heads west across rolling farmland towards Stow. Four pubs I pass en-route are closed and boarded up and when I reach Nether Westcote the campsite here is also closed and the pub has closed at 9:00pm, it's Sunday hours. By now it's pitch black and I can't make it as far as Stow so I'm forced to camp wild in a field near Church Wescote, hungry and tired.

Monday 19: Westcote to Stow-on-the-Wold (10 miles). Cloudy and cold. A welcome breakfast at Bourton-on-the-Water and I continue on the Gloucestershire Way to the pub at Cold Ashton for lunch, it's also closed and there's not a lot ahead for many miles. The bus back to Stow's YHA hostel for the night is my best option.

Tuesday 20: Stow to Painswick (26 miles). Cloudy and drizzly with rain. More farmland with not much to photograph and my lunch stop pub in Kilkenny is also closed (the recession really has hit this part of Gloucestershire) so when I reach the Air Balloon pub at Birdlip mid-afternoon I'm, once again, ravenous. The scenery improves after lunch when I join the Cotswold Way but the weather gets worse. The two roadside hotel pubs in Birdlip are full of wet walkers so I carry on, soaked through, to the Falcon Inn at Painswick and my most expensive night so far, but it has a delight for walkers, a hot bath to soak up the pain, a sort of pain wick.

One photo of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire Ways. I've now walked 944 miles.