England #20 - Chedworth trails in The England Chronicles - September 2024

(Tuesday September 17, 2025)

I am trying really REALLY hard to get this done, so there will be a flurry of entries in the next few days. Well, there will be a flurry if I actually succeed in my ambitions. We’ll see!

After touring the Roman villa and having a stop for refreshment at their cafe, we took a little walk on the trails. A trail. Maybe more than one trail. I couldn’t figure it out and I have NO idea why using something like All Trails never even crossed my mind. We got a map from the visitor center at the villa but it was a handdrawn map that didn’t make much sense when we were actually on the trail. The woman who gave it to us said, “Don’t get lost!” which seemed a pretty good indication that people DO get lost. And as anyone who has read any of my travelogues knows, nobody can do getting lost like Kim and I can! 

There are LOTS of walking trails in the area. The trail that goes from Chedworth to the Roman Villa is the Chedworth Roman Villa and Village Circular trail, but I think the one we were trying to find was the Chedworth Woods and Roman Villa Circular.  So we started off from the villa and pretty much immediately had no idea where we were going. Oddly the trails didn’t seem to be very well marked either, and there were several forks in the trail where we couldn’t decide which one we needed to take.

What I was really wanting to see was an old abandoned train tunnel, which Baker B and I had seen while watching YouTube videos of the area before I left. And ….we succeeded! We didn’t have much luck figuring out the rest of it, but we DID find the tunnel pretty easily. It’s very near the villa, fortunately for us. 

Pretty much straight away there was a quite steep hill with steps to go up. You can barely see the steps here, and I was thinking I didn’t get a picture of them and wondering how that was even possible! Also they don’t look that steep, but they were, so it was a little difficult for Kim right off. I believe this is actually going back down them. 

It’s a gorgeous trail, and also a nature reserve.

Bat houses!

 The abandoned tunnel peering through the trees. 

This had something to do with the disused railway but I’m not sure what. 

As did this.

You can walk through the tunnel, and our not-that-helpful map seemed to indicate that the trail we were searching for was on the other side. Or maybe it was on the other side of the path on top of the tunnel. Who could tell! 

I did indeed walk through the tunnel. It was quite creepy, but also really great. I love ruins! And it was short enough that is wasn’t THAT scary. You could easily flee to the other side if necessary.

  Kim was not interested in walking through the tunnel unless I found that the trail we needed was in fact on the other side. That’s her hoping I wasn’t going to be murdered by Tunnel Ghosts. Although in reality I think she was trying to spare her knee since it was very uneven and rocky inside the tunnel. 

We ended up walking about a mile, despite not being at all sure of where we were going, and finally turned around for fear we’d miss one of the many turns and get lost, like the woman at the visitor center told us specifically not to do. I am ready to go back and explore the whole area properly!

After the villa, it was onwards to Bourton-on-the-Water for the third visit, this time featuring the Miniature Museum. Shockingly I have gone on for so long here that I’ll save that for next time. It was really fun and I don’t want to shortchange it. 

This sign was was somewhere between the villa and getting back on the Fosse Way, the main road. I was turning around because of course I was. I don’t know what the sign was telling us but it was a tad alarming! Or insulting to the poor children and animals. Not sure which.