Ninety-four miles across Gloucestershire from Chepstow to Tewkesbury, through the Forest of Dean and over the Cotswolds
The Gloucestershire Way runs 94 miles across the county from Chepstow, on the Welsh side of the Wye, to Tewkesbury at the meeting of the Severn and the Avon. It falls into three clear parts: first through the heart of the Forest of Dean, then across the Severn Vale and past Gloucester, and finally up onto and along the Cotswolds escarpment. Most walkers take about eight days.
The three sections walk quite differently. The Forest of Dean stretch is heavily wooded, following forest tracks and old mineral lines through some of England’s oldest working woodland, with the Wye Valley on its western edge. The middle is low and flat, crossing the vale of the Severn on field paths and lanes. The last third climbs to the high Cotswold edge, where the walking is more exposed and the views open out west over the vale the route has just crossed. There is real variety of ground, and the middle section is the least demanding.
The route was devised by Gerry and Kate Stewart of the Ramblers and a local walking club, who gave it the subtitle “Forest and Vale and High Blue Hill” — a line from a poem about Gloucestershire by F. W. Harvey, himself a man of the Forest of Dean — because it names the three kinds of country the walk passes through. Both ends are reachable by public transport, and Gloucester near the midpoint is on the rail network, so the walk can be split across two trips.
