We just finished Day 5 on the Cotswold Way, one of Britain’s National Trails.

This is the land that brought us English ivy, honey-suckle rose, multi-flora rose and many other exotics that we’re fighting.  So it was good to find the beautiful and invasive Himalayan Rose. It has taken over swamps over here.

The walk is taking us over hills and dales literally. It doesn’t take much altitude to get spectacular views. Lenny calls it right when he says that it’s a beautiful hike with minimal effort. The land is very open and trees are at a premium. Here, sheep are laying under a tree.

The path, as they call it here, takes us through wooded areas, dominated by oaks and majestic beech trees. Because there are so many sheep and cattle farms, woods are much more precious here than in the U.S. In our part of the country, we want to savor views where here they seem to want to save woods.

Flowers are mostly farm and country road flowers – Queen Anne’s lace, chicory, harebells, yarrows and gigantic thistle.

The most different aspect of walking in Great Britain is that almost all the trails are on private land. There is almost no public land, in the way we know it in the United States. The country is too crowded to have taken the land from private owners and put it the public domain. But with the concept of Right of Ways and Right to Roam laws, landowners must allow walkers the right to, well, roam on their property.