Today’s walk was very pleasant, through the Vale of Evesham, known as the fruit and vegetable basket of England. We walked along lanes and footpaths out of Evesham, passing through market gardens with enormous poly-tunnels, then walked along Shakespeare’s Avon Way, before joining the Heart of England Way. There were few climbs (unless you count the many stiles across fields at almost 100 metre intervals). The only downside today was a stretch of very muddy bridleway.

We stopped for lunch in a riverside pub in Bidford on Avon, where it started to rain heavily. We donned our waterproofs on leaving the pub – to bright sunshine once more! Our accommodation for the night is a rather nondescript pub, but it is clean and the beds are comfortable.

A Backward Glance

Our walk took us past acres of glass greenhouses, some in the process of construction. The irony of all the human effort being made to force grow exotic blooms in glass cathedrals, whilst surrounded by fields of nature’s more splendid floral grandeur was not lost on us. Our route took us alongside the River Avon whose banks were festooned with hawthorn trees in full bloom under a warm blue sky, across fields of buttercups again and through narrow lanes of squelching mud of course. The latter part of the day was spent treading better paths and then pavements into Alcester; over fourteen miles of the good, the bad and the muddily.