Northleach, Hampnett and the Saltway

The Northleach, Hampnett and the Saltway walk is a 4.5-mile (7.2km) circular walk from the Market Place in Northleach, one of the Cotswolds National Landscape's Miles Without Stiles routes. It is easy, with about 80m of ups and downs, and takes about two hours, past Hampnett's painted Norman church and the wool church, with the Wheatsheaf inn at the start.

The route page allows two and a half hours. It goes out past the Old Prison to the hamlet of Hampnett, south by bridleway to the old Saltway, and back across the Fosse Way to the town. The leaflet was last checked by its authors in February 2022.

Northleach and the Old Prison

Gloucester Abbey founded Northleach as a borough and market town around 1220, and in the later Middle Ages it was a centre for the Cotswold wool trade, home to woolmen such as William Midwinter, who died in 1501, and Thomas Bush. The walk leaves the Square westward along West End, past the Wheatsheaf, a seventeenth-century coaching inn with 14 bedrooms that opens from 8am to 11pm every day.

At the crossroads with the Fosse Way stands the Old Prison, built in 1792 by William Blackburn as a house of correction for Sir George Onesiphorus Paul's prison reforms. Most of its cell blocks were pulled down in 1936 and 1937, but the nineteenth-century courtroom survives, the building is listed Grade II*, and the town council says the cells and courtroom are free to see. The leaflet warns that the Old Prison Café is not open in January or February; the Old Prison’s own site gives 9am to 4pm daily with no winter closure, so ring 01451 860339 to check in winter.

Hampnett and St George's

The leaflet calls Hampnett's Norman church worth a visit for its chancel, painted by the Victorian rector, a controversial act in its day. The listing names him as the Rev W Wiggin, working with Clayton and Bell around 1871, after G E Street restored the church in 1868. Stencilled flowers and stars decorate the splays of the chancel windows, the sanctuary vault holds four painted seated figures, probably the evangelists, and the twelfth-century chancel arch has chevron and star mouldings, with pairs of doves carved on its capitals.

St George's is listed Grade I, and the stump of a cross in the churchyard, possibly fourteenth century, is listed too. As you walk on through the village, the leaflet notes that Hampnett was a much bigger village in Norman times, and that you may be able to make out the foundations of deserted houses across to your left.

The Saltway and the Portway

From Ballingers Barn a bridleway drops into a valley and climbs out to the Saltway, the ancient road along which salt was carried from Droitwich into the Cotswolds. Halfway along it you cross the Portway, which the leaflet calls the thirteenth-century road from Gloucester Abbey to its sheep market in Northleach, and which makes a short cut home if you want one.

The walk leaves the Saltway at the Fosse Way, the Roman road that formed the western boundary of the ancient parish of Northleach, which you cross for the second time here. Our guide to the Roman Cotswolds follows it across the region.

Winterwell Barn and the wool church

A restricted bridleway beyond the Fosse Way follows a wall and becomes a track past Winterwell Barn and Church Farm, and a road brings you down into the town. If you have time, the leaflet suggests the church of St Peter and St Paul, with its unusual chimes at midday.

It is listed Grade I. Its tower dates from about 1400, the clerestory was paid for by the wool merchant John Fortey around 1445 to 1455, and the south aisle and two-storey porch followed between 1460 and 1480. Inside are about ten brasses to woolmen from around 1400 to 1628, Fortey's with his feet on a woolpack, a fifteenth-century stone pulpit and an east window of 1963 by Christopher Webb. Our guide to the Cotswold wool churches puts it alongside the others.

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Food, parking and buses

Food and drink are all in Northleach, at the start and finish: the route page lists pubs and cafés in the Market Square and at the Old Prison, whose café the leaflet says does not open in January or February (ring to check in winter). Lynwood & Co, in the Island House on the Market Place, opens for breakfast, coffee and lunch from 8am to 4pm from Monday to Saturday and 8am to 3pm on Sundays. There are free public toilets in the Market Place, open from 9am to 6pm in summer and 9am to 5pm in winter, with an accessible toilet (RADAR key) but no baby change. The route page points to free parking at the Market Place, which the town council describes as on-street parking rather than a car park.

For buses, the route page names the Pulhams 801 and 855 and the Stagecoach S2, but the Pulhams X52 replaced the S2 in March 2026, and the 801 calls at the Market Place only once a day each way, in the morning towards Chipping Norton and the afternoon towards Cheltenham. The most useful bus is the 855, which runs about hourly between Bourton-on-the-Water and Cirencester from Monday to Saturday; the X52 between Cheltenham and Oxford calls about every two hours. Both stop in the Market Place. Check with the operators before you travel, and see our guide to the Cotswolds without a car for the wider network.

Dogs

The route page gives no dog rules and mentions no livestock. With no stiles and only gates on the bridleways, a dog can manage the whole walk, but keep it on a lead on the roads, which make up a good part of the route, and at the two crossings of the A429. Our guide to the Cotswolds with a dog has the rules in fields with stock.

Paths, gates and roads

There are no stiles: the leaflet describes a metal gate and then another gate on the bridleway into the valley, and the National Landscape rates the walk for unsurfaced paths and basic fitness, warning that stile-free routes can still have muddy or narrow stretches. A good part of the walk is on roads: the lane to Hampnett, the Saltway and the road back into town.

Take care at the two crossings of the Fosse Way, the A429: by the Old Prison on the way out, and where the Saltway meets it on the way back.

More walks nearby

Northleach has no other walk of ours yet, but two short ones start about 5 miles away. The stile-free loop from Harford Bridge to Naunton is another Miles Without Stiles route, past a lost village on the Windrush, and the walk along the River Coln from Bibury follows the next valley south.