Our aim here is simply to encourage our fellow Brits, and overseas visitors too, to make the most of some of the world's most beautiful countryside, steeped as all of it is in history, tradition, and a respect for nature.
The idea came to us because after a couple of recent outings on Bredon Hill, near our new home in Tewkesbury, we realised that the two of us suffer from an inability to follow even the simplest of written directions, or even a map.
We're not proud of it, merely suggesting that instead of offering such tips as "after 240 metres, go through the gate and turn right, keeping the wall on your left-hand side" a snapshot of the gate and the wall and what's ahead might also be helpful.
We began our adventures afoot by heading for Elmley Castle, and putting ourselves in the hands of an excellent website called "Visit Bredon Hill."
I think it is fair to say that for ramblers more attuned to maps than Jen and I are, the directions on the site are easy to follow and there is no excuse for getting lost.
But somehow...
Our plan is merely to build on walking routes already in place by using our new smart-phone to snap each decision point as we come to it, so that others with similar technology in their pockets can compare each photo with what's in front of them.
At this point, I must confess that the idea for this blog did not occur to us until after our second Bredon Hill adventure ended with us wandering off-course and having to walk an extra mile or so back to our car.
So, no helpful decision-point photos this time...just a collection of views from our Westmancote walk on Thursday, April 16.
Couldn't resist this shot! A reminder that flowers
don't need human eyes to see them bloom (although
this is a popular walk, and no doubt plenty of ramblers
have admired hilltop flora since Spring sprung!)
A splendid specimen of a traditional Cotswold wool
fence? Probably not. Just like people, sheep tend to
think the grass is always greener just out of reach, so
for hundreds of metres, woolly heads leave their
mark as bored beasties reach out for a forbidden treat.
Dry-stone walls dating back to the early 1700s criss-cross
the Cotswolds countryside and help highlight its grandeur.
This isn't a model example but the view beyond it caught
our eye.
One reason a new approach to directions for walkers
might not be a bad idea! Posts like this can be a little
confusing, especially for folks like us who have no way
of knowing when we've covered 245m and it's time to
turn this way or that!
A better bit of wall. Thinking about all the stone that
had to be hauled uphill in wagons and then laid a dozen
layers high and two wide for mile upon mile makes
hiking empty handed seem like a breeze! The
lads who laid this lot were not afraid of hard work,
that's for sure!
More view, more wall. We plan to come back to Bredon
Hill very soon, and hopefully the haze won't be there to
dim a view that is spectacular even when it's not
pin-sharp. We didn't bother with a snap of Parson's
Tower (or Parson's Folly) because it's just plain
ugly! It has a history, but it's an eye-sore for all
that. Sorry, Parsons all.
We'll start on "photo directions" next time we hear the hills' siren call, and captions will be verbatim extracts from walk descriptions already available on line. The phone we carry is a Microsoft (formerly Nokia) Lumia 635, which we believe gives Apple's very expensive iPhone a decent run for our money. The camera isn't the world's most impressive, but it does the job, and apps such as Here Drive and Here Maps, backed up by StepTrax or a similar walk-oriented means of finding out where you went wrong (!) make the phone pretty much perfect. Google also has some wonderful aerial shots of Bredon Hill, well worth a look.
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