Day 7 Middle Yard (Stroud) to Old Sodbury

Reveille 6.15. Breakfast 7.00. Depart 8.00. Arrived 6pm. Distance 21 miles. A long and fairly uneventful day. Found out it was Ian’s birthday today which even he had forgotten, so a few extra pints tonight to celebrate especially after all that walking. The Valley Views is an excellent B&B really walker friendly. The Cotswold Way is a really good well looked after path. The scenery that comes into view as you turn a corner or climb a hill is amazing. We have decided that we need to go back and do the whole route as we have cut off some of the bigger loops to complete our end to end (E2E). We are at the Dog Inn (no it not in a lay-by!). The accommodation is in rose cottage next door to the pub and we have free run of the place. The weather is really nice especially this afternoon when the sun came out with a nice breeze and the air cleared to give yet more stunning views, we thought we could see Glastonbury! (Ian and Barry joke). It has to be said that we forget that there are some parts of the country where there is total quiet without a manmade sound anywhere and the Cotswold Way is one of them although a few of the trees have grown so tall that the views are obscured. In some places it was that dark even the luminous parts of the compass lit up. We have had a very nice meal at the pub whilst playing trivial pursuit. We are conducting an experiment to see if there is any correlation between how much beer you drink and how loud you snore.