Laurie Lee Wildlife Way: A Cotswold walk that blends nature and poetry

Ben Lerwill traces the Slad Valley trail that pays tribute to a much-loved poet

Laurie Lee Wildlife Way follows the peaks and troughs of Slad Valley (Ben Lerwill)

Early December in the Cotswolds and the morning is bright and cold. Two buzzards are carving high circles in the late autumn air. Below them lies a hushed world of tumbling slopes, clear brooks and crunchy-underfoot woodland. This is Gloucestershire’s Slad Valley, a wide scoop of land where even the leaves fall in slow motion. Houses are few, but peeking out from one hillside is the tiny woodsmoke village of Slad, home from the age of three to Laurie Lee.  

There’s a good chance you know the rest – Lee’s songful book about his childhood here, Cider With Rosie, was for years a set text on the national curriculum – and even in these arduous times, with summer long gone, it would take a deadened heart not to feel the seductiveness of the setting. The valley’s deep-sided meadows and copses practically beg to be walked, and I’ve met up with a friend to do just that.

The Laurie Lee Wildlife Way was created in 2014 to tie in with the centenary of the writer’s birth, although many of the paths it follows are age-old. It traces a 4.5-mile loop around the valley, beginning on the outskirts of the village before slowly plunging and rising across the fields, muddying our wellies, and crossing four different nature reserves. At 10 intervals along the route there are “poetry posts”, wooden boards each inset with the texts of one of Lee’s poems. This is not a walk to be rushed.

Cider With Rosie conveys the “creamy, hazy and amber-coloured” days of a Gloucestershire summer (both Rosie and the cider are encountered at haymaking time), but also speaks vividly of the wiles of the other seasons. Lee remembers the colder months as a time of “jigsaws of frost on the window” and “distant fields … crumpled like oyster shells”. This time of year in the valley, he writes, “was not even summer’s opposite; it was merely that other place”.

We’re in that other place. Setting off from chilly Bulls Cross, a short way north of Slad, we walk at a measured pace, slowed by the early steepness of the path and distracted by the rustle of life from the hazel woods. It’s 9.30 in the morning. Pheasants fluster out of the undergrowth, robins sing from bare branches and half-seen squirrels scramble up ivied trunks. Soon we crest a hill, and the view bellies out to the south.

In 1934, aged 19, Lee famously strolled out of the valley carrying little more than “a violin in a blanket” and a few basic possessions. His long busking ramble eventually carried him to the south coast of Spain (a journey retold in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning), although his devotion to this pocket of the Cotswolds remained strong. The financial success of Cider With Rosie, published when he was in his forties, even allowed him to purchase the Slad cottage of his boyhood. Many of his final years were spent in the village.

This lasting fondness for the English countryside is apparent in Home From Abroad, one of the poems displayed on the first half of the walk. It finishes with these lines: 

“So do I breathe the hayblown airs of home,

“And watch the sea-green elms drip birds and shadows,

“And as the twilight nets the plunging sun

“My heart’s keel slides to rest among the meadows.”

The four nature reserves we pass through – the limestone grassland of Snows Farm, the ancient weald of Laurie Lee Wood (yep, him again), the panoramic high-point of Swift’s Hill and the tall-tree woodland of Frith Wood – all add something to the route, although in truth the entire walk is an immersive one. Jays swoop out of the trees. Green woodpeckers arrow across the slopes. The coppered leaves are ankle-deep, the beeches cluster in mighty ranks and the sheep trails are studded with tiny, unidentifiable fungi as pale as cream.

After passing through the tucked-away hamlet of Elscombe, we stop on sunny, blustery Swift’s Hill to devour lunchtime sandwiches. In spring and summer this spot is renowned for its rare orchids. Today there’s nothing but bouncy grass and a tilting view that stretches out past the town of Stroud.    

Then it’s a long snaking path back to the valley floor, across grazed fields and down puddly lanes. Eventually we climb again to reach the road that leads through Slad. The route, nearly done now, suggests a short diversion to the village centre. This is worth doing. Lee’s old cottage, Rosebank, is still huddled neatly below the road, and we reach the locked doors of his former local, The Woolpack, two minutes later. When open, it’s a fabulous little country boozer.

The pub also sits opposite a small 19th century church with a slender pen-nib of a steeple. Outside the church’s eastern wall, looking out across the hills, stands Lee’s gravestone. It may not quite mark the finish of the trail, but it’s a symbolic end. The epitaph on the stone is a telling one: “Laurie Lee 1914-1997 – He lies in the valley he loved”.

Travel essentials:

There’s free parking in the large layby at Bulls Cross, at the start of the walk.  

Note that the walk involves uneven ground, a number of stiles and one very steep section. The route is reasonably well waymarked, but purchasing this £1 leaflet (50p postage), which includes directions and a map, is highly recommended.