Seven Springs and Leckhampton Hill

The Seven Springs and Leckhampton Hill walk is a 5.4-mile (8.7km) circular walk on the Cotswold Edge south of Cheltenham. It climbs about 179m, with several steep slopes, and takes about two and a half hours. The outward half follows the Cotswold Way to the hillfort and the Devil's Chimney.

The Cotswold Way from Seven Springs

Seven Springs is a hamlet at a road junction where the springs that feed the River Churn rise beside the road. The Cotswold Way passes through on its sixth section, from Dowdeswell to Leckhampton Hill, 4.7 miles by Lineover Wood, Seven Springs, Charlton Kings Common and the Devil's Chimney. This walk takes the last part of that section and makes it a loop. Since 3 July 2026, work on the A417 near Birdlip has diverted the next section of the trail, beyond the Devil's Chimney, along the Leckhampton Hill road and a permissive path at National Star for at least six months; the National Trail gives no diversion on this loop.

Charlton Kings Common and the hillfort

Leckhampton Hill and Charlton Kings Common together cover 67 hectares, most of it registered common land where walkers may roam freely. Cheltenham Town Council, now the borough council, bought the hill in 1927, and Charlton Kings Common passed to the borough council in 1965. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its limestone grassland and its geology, and a National Nature Reserve.

At the top of the hill is Leckhampton Camp, an Iron Age hillfort with a single rampart, which the Friends of Leckhampton Hill date to about 800 BC to AD 43; the trig point stands on its east rampart, and a round barrow in a square enclosure lies nearby. Both are scheduled monuments. From the top, the views take in Cheltenham, the Severn Vale, the Malvern Hills and, on a clear day, Wales.

The Devil's Chimney and the quarries

The walk turns at the Devil's Chimney, a pillar of rock below the scarp edge. The last recorded quarrying here ran from the late eighteenth century to the mid 1920s, and the Friends think the chimney was left isolated when an incline was cut to the top, then weathered, perhaps with some help from the quarrymen. The way down passes the bases of four limekilns built in the early 1920s with a government loan to ease unemployment, a venture that had closed by 1927, and follows the Standard Gauge Incline, one of the old quarry railways that walkers now use as paths.

The access walkers enjoy was hard won. After the owner, Henry Dale, built Tramway Cottage for his quarry foreman in 1897 and fenced 26 acres of the hill in 1899, crowds pulled down the fences in 1902 and razed the cottage, and in 1906, when a crowd attacked the cottage again, the Riot Act was read and eight rioters were jailed. The council bought the hill in 1927 and opened it to the public in 1929. Our walk Leckhampton Hill and the Devil's Chimney covers the hill's quarries in more detail.

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What walkers report

Steep, loose slopes and cattle on the common are what walkers mention most. They describe plenty of steep climbs and descents, with loose ground in places (March and July 2026), and recommend trail shoes in wet or winter weather (January and July 2026).

Dogs, parking and food

Dogs are welcome, and walkers had theirs off the lead for most of the way (August 2026, March 2026), but cattle graze the fields and common (March 2026). The Friends of Leckhampton Hill say Belted Galloways graze the common in autumn and winter, in GPS collars, and that dogs should be on a short lead near them; our guide to the Cotswolds with a dog has more on walking near stock.

The National Trail and the Cotswolds National Landscape give parking in the lay-by opposite the Seven Springs pub, which has closed, or in the lorry park across the roundabout on the A436. The route also passes the Bridge car park on Daisy Bank Road below Leckhampton Hill, so you can start the loop there. By bus, Stagecoach West's 51 between Cheltenham and Cirencester stops at Seven Springs, about hourly on weekdays and every two hours on Sundays. With the Seven Springs pub closed, none of our sources names a pub or café on the route, so take water and something to eat. Off the route, StarBistro at National Star in Ullenwood serves breakfast and lunch on weekdays, and the Fox at Dowdeswell, on the A40 where the Cotswold Way crosses the road, has food every day.

More on the Cotswold Edge

The rocks of Leckhampton Hill are among the thickest Jurassic sections in the country, as our page on where the Cotswolds are explains. For a gentler visit, the National Landscape publishes a mobility-scooter route on the hill, listed in our guide to the accessible Cotswolds. North along the scarp, Cleeve Common and Cleeve Cloud reaches the highest ground in the Cotswolds; to the south-west, Haresfield Beacon and Painswick Beacon are two more hillforts on the edge.