Kingham, Daylesford and the Evenlode

The Kingham and Daylesford walk is a 4.4-mile (7.1km) circular walk from Kingham across Daylesford's farmland to the River Evenlode and back by the river meadows. It is close to flat, with about 32m of climbing, takes about an hour and a half, and is wet in winter. It ends at the Wild Rabbit.

There are two pubs at the village end, and the farm shop and café at Daylesford is a short detour near the top of the loop. The walk crosses the Cotswold Line twice, once by a bridge and once on the level.

Kingham's church and old rectory

The walk starts on Church Street by the Wild Rabbit and finishes past St Andrew's church. Its listing dates the church to the mid-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, built of coursed ironstone with limestone dressings, its tower in three stages with crocketed pinnacles at the corners. The chancel was rebuilt in 1688 and the south aisle added in a restoration of 1852 to 1853. On the north aisle, look for the date 1769 cut into a stone.

Next door, Kingham House was the rectory, built around 1688 for the Reverend William Dowdeswell, whose coat of arms breaks the pediment over the front door, with a winged angel's head in the pediment. Its late seventeenth-century gatepiers on Church Street carry pineapple finials. A barn just north-west of the house has 1767 cut on a corner stone and twelve tiers of pigeon holes, mostly filled in, in its gable, and the listing suggests it may have been the rectory's tithe barn.

On the way out along West Street and West End, Manor Farmhouse has a datestone of 1801, and the Malt House is late seventeenth century, with stone-mullioned windows under dripstones.

Across Daylesford's fields to the Evenlode

Beyond the houses, a run of public bridleways heads north-west across open fields for about a mile and a half, past the Daylesford Black Barns and the estate's vegetable packing store. Daylesford Farm lies about 250m off the line: its shop opens Monday to Saturday 8am to 6pm and Sunday 9am to 5pm, and the Old Spot café takes walk-ins from 11am to 4pm. Walkers report stopping there for coffee or lunch.

At the top of the loop the bridleway crosses the Cotswold Line on a bridge and then the Evenlode, which runs close beside the railway here. The path turns south down the western side of the valley, by field edges and the margins of the woods.

Back by the river and over the railway

The southern half keeps to the river meadows. It crosses the Evenlode on a footbridge with a kissing gate, then crosses the Cotswold Line itself at the Bledington foot crossing, on the level, before field paths lead back into Kingham by the recreation ground. This is the main line to London, so stop, look and listen before you cross.

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What walkers report

This is low ground, and it floods. Walkers who went in November and December 2025 and January 2026 report fields under water, a long stretch towards the railway flooded, and some who turned back halfway. Wear wellingtons in winter.

In October 2026 walkers reported the paths through the woods harder going, with forestry work under way and parts overgrown and not clearly marked. Walkers report cows and sheep in some fields, so keep dogs on a lead near them. Walkers recommend the Royal British Legion car park in Kingham, which they report as free, rather than parking outside the Wild Rabbit.

Food, drink and getting there

The Wild Rabbit, one of Daylesford's pubs, opens daily from midday, with dinner Wednesday to Sunday, and several walkers finish there. The Kingham Plough on the green opens daily from 8.30am and has rooms, and Daylesford's cottages in Kingham are another place to stay. Our story on Cotswold pubs and the breweries behind them has more on who runs which.

For a night in the village, our page on places to stay in Kingham has the inns and cottages.

Kingham station, on the Cotswold Line from London Paddington, is about a mile (1.7km) from the start by Station Road and Church Street, so the walk works without a car: our guide to the Cotswolds without a car has the trains. The station car park has 140 spaces.

More walks near Kingham

The National Landscape's car-free loop from Kingham station to Bledington follows the Evenlode from the station to Bledington's green and the King's Head, and Adlestrop, Daylesford and Lower Oddington reaches Daylesford's farm shop from the other side of the valley. A few miles north-east, Salford and the Rollright Stones is a hillier walk of about the same length, and Stow-on-the-Wold and Maugersbury is 5.6 miles away by road.