We decided to fit another walk in this week. We wanted something a bit longer than Mondays Cheddar Gorge ramble so we decided to drive in to the Cotswolds. The area is not too far away from us, about 50 miles. I had a look through our OS Cotswolds Pathfinder Book and chose a nine mile circular walk starting at Winchcombe. The route loops around a ridge to the east of Winchcombe, taking in Hailes Abbey and Sudeley Castle. I found the same route in my Outdoor Active App with no problems and used that to guide us.

Winchcombe itself is a really pretty Cotswold town with a nice High Street. There’s a public car park in the centre of town that was well signposted. Parking was £1 for the whole day. There are public toilets here as well, that will cost you an extra 20p. Having parked up we stopped briefly in the High Street to pick up a coffee and then walked on to join the Cotswold Way public footpath.

The ground underfoot was really good throughout the whole walk. This first section is fairly flat and makes its way along a tarmac track, that becomes a track across fields as you walk towards the remains of Hailes Abbey. It’s about three miles to the Abbey, crossing really nice countryside, which was lovely in the warm sunshine.

The Abbey is run by English Heritage so there’s an entrance fee to look around the ruins. It was closed whilst we were there and only opens on Sat/Sun at this time of year. I’d been hoping to see some of it from the road, and path around the outside, but you can’t see much. We moved on from there without stopping, following the Cotswold Way as it began to climb up to the walks high point.

It’s a long, but not steep climb up to the small hamlet of Farmcote, where we saw lots of Red Kites circling some tall fir trees on the top of the hill. We also found the small Norman church, Farmcote St Faith, pictured above. The views at this point, out over the valley towards the Malverns, were really impressive.

The going was pretty flat along the top of the ridge from this point and the walk makes its way, via bridleways and public footpaths, through the Farmcote Estate. The paths are well kept and a lot of the time, from this point onwards, we were walking on tarmac or concrete. Being the Cotswolds, we saw lots of really impressive properties and were passed by the occasional Ferrari. There are lots of well kept horse pastures as well, with big properties off of them hidden by large gates.

We stopped for lunch by one particularly large manor house, before continuing through the estate towards Sudeley Castle. Not long after restarting the walk we came to the ridge overlooking our return route to Winchcombe. From there made our way down on tarmac paths winding its way through lovely, well kept grounds. We walked through fields of sheep and saw lots of lambs.

We eventually came upon Sudeley Castle which isn’t a castle at all. It’s a large manor house. It looked impressive but was closed today. Normal admission is £10, when it is open.

Just after the Manor House we came back in to Winchcombe. The route was just over nine miles long. We started at about 10.30am and it took us just over four hours. We didn’t hurry and stopped at several points to look around. We really enjoyed this hike, it’s not the most challenging but just a lovely walk through fantastic countryside with fabulous views. We’ve a couple more routes to pick off in the Cotswolds but we’ll definitely do this walk again.

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All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.