Quenington to Fairford

The Quenington to Fairford walk is a 5.75-mile (9.25km) circular walk from the Keepers Arms in Quenington, in the Coln villages, down the river valley to Fairford and back. It takes two and a half to three hours, with several stiles and moderate slopes, past Fairford's Mill Bridge and St Mary's glass. Part of it is closed on Tuesdays.

It is the Fairford walk in Quenington Parish Council's River Valley Walks, printed in January 2020, and the route page grades it as possibly having steep slopes, for moderate fitness.

Plan the day around one rule: part of the way is a permitted path, open by permission of the Ernest Cook Trust, and it is closed on Tuesdays; the Trust's own Fairford page and Fairford Town Council's route sheet both still say so. Most of the route is marked with yellow paint on posts and trees. The town council's sheet calls the paths generally good, but warns that the fields can be muddy and some sections have a slight camber.

Quenington and the valley

Quenington is a village of about 600 people with two Grade I buildings on Church Road, both a short way past where the walk turns off. The parish council says more than half the village is a conservation area. St Swithin's is a church recorded by 1100, with fine Norman doorways and carved tympana on both its north and south sides. Beside it stands the gatehouse of the preceptory the Knights Hospitallers founded here in the twelfth century, a fourteenth-century gateway partly rebuilt in the early sixteenth; our story on Templars and Hospitallers in the Cotswolds tells how the order held Quenington until 1540.

The walk itself leaves by a gravel drive, passes an old stone barn and follows the valley bottom over stiles beside metal gates. A short climb through a strip of woodland brings you to an open field, and the leaflet's shorter option turns back at the metal gate beyond it.

The permitted path and the Oxpens

Just before the metal gate, the permitted path turns left into the wood. The leaflet thanks the Ernest Cook Trust, an outdoor learning charity based in Fairford, for allowing its use. Out of the wood, a grass path runs beside the stream across a large open field, with two log seats part way along, and near the town it crosses the stream and passes through the doorway of the old Oxpens building into a picnic site.

Fairford Mill, the Mill Bridge and St Mary's

The Mill Bridge crosses the Coln beside Mill House, the former Fairford Mill. The bridge is late eighteenth-century ashlar, a single low elliptical arch with a stone balustrade; the mill is a seventeenth-century building extended in 1827 and now three houses, with two rows of holes for doves under the eaves.

Up the hill, St Mary's was rebuilt from about 1480 by John Tame and his son Edmund around a tower whose base is early fifteenth century. Its listing calls it an intact example of the Perpendicular style, and its glass of about 1500, largely by Barnard Flower, Henry VII's master glass painter, is what the parish calls the only complete set of late medieval glass in a parish church in the country. The church opens daily from 10am to 5pm in summer and 10am to 4pm in winter. Our story on the Cotswold wool churches has more.

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Stiles, gates and farmland

There are stiles on both legs: two beside metal gates in the valley, one into the woodland strip, one by the farm gate past the school and one near the pump house, with two bridges after it. The stretch from the log seats back to Quenington is walked twice, out and back.

Dogs and parking

Dogs are welcome at the Keepers Arms, but the walk crosses working farmland, and the leaflet asks you to clear up after your dog and follow the Countryside Code. With five stiles, it suits a dog you can lift; our guide to the Cotswolds with a dog has the rules near livestock.

The leaflet gives no parking or buses. Our guide to the Coln villages lists no public car park in them, so park considerately on the road in Quenington, or ask at the Keepers Arms if you are eating there. Stagecoach West's 76 stops in Quenington a few times a day, Monday to Saturday.

Food and drink

The Keepers Arms, at the start and finish, is a family-run free house with independent real ales, four rooms and a welcome for dogs. When we checked in October 2026 it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and on Wednesdays too outside its summer hours, so walk from Thursday to Sunday to be sure of both the pub and the permitted path, or ring 01285 750349. In Fairford, the Bull is a Grade II listed coaching inn on the Market Place, owned by the Arkell's brewery since 1973 and open from 8am every day; dogs are welcome in the bar, but not in the dining areas. The leaflet gives the High Street detour from just past the church.

More walks on the Coln

The same leaflet has a 2-mile village walk and a 4-mile Coln valley walk from the Keepers Arms. Upstream, the walk from Bibury is a 4-mile Miles Without Stiles loop, with perhaps one stile, and the loop from Coln St Aldwyns to Bibury follows the Coln up through Oxhill Wood. Downstream, the loop from Lechlade by the Thames to Buscot starts 4.4 miles by road from Fairford. Coln St Aldwyns is one of the villages near famous ones that see far fewer visitors, as our guide to the Cotswolds without the crowds explains. The Quenington River Valley Walks leaflet (opens in a new tab) has the map.