The Cotswold Way, Conclusion

In this final installment, things take a turn for the worse, and the weirder

Thus far in my Cotswold Walk, the pleasures of walking in the English countryside and the pleasures of synchronicity (the rom/com manifestations; the grad school coincidences) had combined to outweigh the negatives (the weather, the lack of accommodation, my apparent inability to read a map). But things were about to take a turn for the worse.

At the end of dinner with Jamie and Mary, our conversation turned to the weather. The day’s intermittent dousings had by nightfall morphed into a steady shower, and the BBC was warning that torrential downpours and potentially life-threatening flooding were on the way. Jamie and Mary had decided that if things were bad as predicted come morning, the two of them would take the bus into Cheltenham, and hide out there for the day. 

I would say the next day dawned as badly as predicted, but ‘dawn’ doesn’t exactly capture the absolute waterfalls that were streaming from the pewter-colored sky. I decided to follow Jamie and Mary’s example when the minute it took me to get from the hotel entrance to the bus stop to check out the schedule left me drenched. Before I left for good though, I asked the receptionist if she knew of any nice hotels around Stonehouse, the town where I expected to stay the following night—the one after Cheltenham. That day would be my actual birthday, and I didn’t want to spend it walking past places to stay. She took my credit card, and made a phone call.