#11: Cooper's Hill - Painswick

The Bonaventure

Painswick Yews

The view from Painswick Beacon iron age hill fort - into which several holes of Painswick Golf Course are incorporated! - is breathtaking. Some of the panoramas so far along the Cotswold Way are very wide but this is a full 360° and well worth anyone's effort to walk there, as long as you can dodge the golf balls.

I spent a little time at both the start and end of the walk looking at Cooper's Hill; from both the bottom and from the top. And it's steep - it's very steep. No one sane would contemplate running down whilst chasing a rolling cheese! So just where do they find the large numbers of people every year who willingly hurl themselves down this preciptious slope in the interests of being first to the bottom so they get the cheese. I love cheese - but I know my limits. The annual filming of the event is perhaps the magnet which attacts the maddest. The filming could almost be for an episode of "I'm an idiot - stretcher me out of here".

Painswick is a beautiful village - aren't they all - but the churchyard with dozens of clippped yews has to be it's most notable attraction. But they're a real challenge to photograph well. There's a colour one above but I took several in b&w from which hopefully one or two will prove to be worth publishing. Inside the church there's a beautiful old model of one of Francis Drake's early vessels - the Bonaventure.