A weekend of pub walks in the Cotswolds, from Guiting Power

This is a weekend of four Cotswold walks, two a day, each ending at a pub, from a base in Guiting Power at the head of the Windrush valley. Saturday is the long loop to Naunton with lunch at the Farmers Arms, then the river path between the Slaughters and tea at the inn in Lower Slaughter. Sunday climbs the Cotswold Way above Winchcombe to Belas Knap, a long barrow built around 3000 BC, and comes down to lunch on the High Street. The driving is three short hops, none over 15 minutes.

Every walk here is one of ours, with its own page, map and directions, and every pub has a listing with its kitchen hours, checked in October 2026. Our page of pub walks in the Cotswolds lists 41, if you want to swap one.

Why this route

The best pub walks start at the door, and Guiting Power has two pubs and a loop that leaves from the green between them. The Windrush valley here is quiet in a way Bourton, further down the river, is not: the walk to Naunton crosses farmland and beech wood with one village on the way. The Slaughters are a 10-minute drive away and quieter in the late afternoon, when the day visitors thin out.

Winchcombe is the other half because it is the walkers' town of the Cotswold Edge. The Cotswold Way runs through it, both its inns take walkers and dogs, and Belas Knap gives the weekend its one real climb, onto the edge of the hills with the vale below. Saturday is valley walking and Sunday is scarp walking, which is the Cotswolds in two days.

Where to base yourself

Stay at the Hollow Bottom in Guiting Power, six rooms, five of them above the village pub, with breakfast included and dogs allowed in every room, for £15 a dog (2026). The rates do not rise for Cheltenham race weeks, which matters in March. Rooms are ready from 3pm, you leave by 11am, there is no minimum stay, and parking is on the road only, as the inn's own site says. The Farmers Arms, the village's other pub, is a Donnington house with a skittle alley and no rooms.

If the Hollow Bottom is full, stay in Winchcombe and reverse the weekend: the Lion takes dogs in all nine rooms and serves food from 8am to 9pm Monday to Saturday, and the White Hart has sixteen rooms with breakfast included when you book direct. Our pubs with rooms in the Cotswolds has the others within reach.

Saturday: the Windrush valley and the Slaughters

Start from the green by 9.30am. The loop goes south on the Windrush Way by Gawley Wood and past the farm at Aylworth, climbs above Naunton by the golf course and comes home on the Wardens' Way, 6.3 miles with 200m of ups and downs and two stiles. You cross the B4068 twice, once with 50m along the verge, so keep a dog close there. Allow three to three and a half hours with a stop, which brings you back to the Farmers Arms while its kitchen is serving lunch, from midday to 2.30pm.

In the afternoon drive to Lower Slaughter and walk up the River Eye to Upper Slaughter and back, 2 miles on the Wardens' Way, almost level. Parking is the hard part: neither village has a car park, and walkers report free spaces on Copsehill Road that go early at weekends, so if the street is full, drive back to Bourton and walk in on the field path. By 4pm the village is quieter, and the Slaughters Country Inn serves its lunch menu until 5pm.

Sunday: Belas Knap and Sudeley

Winchcombe is 15 minutes from Guiting Power over the wold. From Back Lane car park the loop climbs the Cotswold Way through the woods to Belas Knap, free and open in daylight all year, where the mound has a false entrance at its north end and four burial chambers in its sides. It comes down on the Winchcombe Way by Wadfield Farm, with two stiles and a narrow stretch of road, 5.5 miles in two to two and three quarter hours.

Lunch is at the end of the walk on the High Street. The White Hart serves food from breakfast to 9pm. The Lion does not serve between 11am and midday on a Sunday but feeds you all afternoon. Afterwards the level loop to Sudeley Castle follows the castle drive past the lime avenue and the lake. The castle opens daily from mid-March to the start of November with last admission at 3pm, so if you want Katherine Parr's tomb in the chapel, go in straight after lunch and walk the loop later.

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Swaps for rain or a quieter day

In rain, keep the Naunton loop, which is mostly field and wood with no exposed top, and drop Belas Knap for the Sudeley loop and the castle. The climb to the barrow is steep and slippery in the wet, and the view, which is the point of it, disappears in cloud.

For a quieter Sunday, or if the Lion and the White Hart are full, walk Stow and Lower Swell, 3.6 miles from Stow down to the River Dikler and up to Lower Swell, where the Golden Ball is in the village, a step off the route: a Donnington pub where dogs on leads may go anywhere but the kitchen, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and open until 6pm on Sundays. Without a car, Kingham station and Bledington is an easy circular of about 3.7 miles (6km) from the platform along the River Evenlode to the King's Head on Bledington's green and back by the river.

The honest limits

These are farmland walks, and from October to April the fields below Naunton and the climb to Belas Knap are muddy. Boots, not trainers. Sheep graze below the barrow and in the fields by the Eye, with lambs in spring, so a dog stays on a lead there, and the Countryside Code asks for a lead on open access land from 1 March to 31 July. The Slaughters walk shares its path with a lot of people on a summer afternoon.

Pub kitchens set the pace of the weekend. Lunch stops between 2pm and 3pm almost everywhere, Sunday kitchens close early, and Monday is the day many village pubs rest, so this plan is built for a Saturday and Sunday. Belas Knap, in English Heritage's care, has no toilets or café, so use the ones in Winchcombe before you set out.