Cotswold Way Relay 2026 (Leg 10)

My husband and I recently took part in Cotswold Way Relay for the second time. I previously ran it in 2024 and he ran it last year, when I chose to prioritise going to Bushy parkrun for the octogenarian parkrun with my dad. (Sadly it seems the two events are going to clash ever year, which is a real shame.)

The Cotswold Way Relay is a race along the Cotswold Way, which is a 103 mile trail across the Cotswold hills from Chipping Campden to Bath. Organised by Team Bath AC, the relay divides the Cotswold Way into 10 legs. Around 100 teams from running clubs in the area take part every year. The Chipping Campden leg starts at 7am and each leg has a mass start, so you don’t have to wait for the previous runner from your team to get in before you start running.

I’m very grateful that the organiser of the race for our club put my husband and I on the same leg. We were lucky enough to be given Leg 10 – the final leg. When we ran it before, our club had three teams and one experienced Cotswold Way runner on each leg was given the job of being leg captain and organising the other runners. We just had two teams this year and needed to organise ourselves! It was quite a scary prospect. I felt like I needed some mysterious grown up to come and sort things out for me.

But we did a recce two weeks before the race and that really helped. As I previously ran Leg 9, I recognised the starting point as being where I finished last time and knew where we had to park. Although we actually started running a bit early on our recce! My daughter drove us down for that, so we didn’t have to juggle cars. My husband downloaded the route onto his watch, which was sometimes useful and sometimes not. We discovered the Cotswold Way was very well signposted, although sometimes the signposts are pretty small, so you need to keep your eyes peeled.

Our running club is very inclusive, but the Cotswold Way Relay isn’t. It has a cut-off time for each leg and a cut-off runner. The cut-off time works out at about 12 minutes per mile, which when the miles are very hilly, isn’t slow. When we did our recce, it took us exactly two hours, which is the cut-off time. And we did stop our watches for taking photos etc!

On the day, we had some car juggling to do. The usual thing is to drive two cars down to the finish, then drive one back to the start. We would have had to leave home very early for that. So my husband drove down to Bath on his own and got the train from Bath to Bristol Parkway. This meant I could leave home a bit later (spending more time at home with Hetty, our cockapoo) and pick him up from Bristol Parkway before driving to Cold Ashton for 4:15pm, ready for a 5pm start.

Toilets were in the village hall, where we observed something we’d never seen before – a longer queue for the men than the ladies! There were no urinals, more male runners and just one cubicle for the men and one for the women. We then headed down the hill, over the A46 and to registration at the start line. We’d got our numbers in advance, so just needed ticking off a list.

And at 5pm, we were off! We’d agreed we wouldn’t run together, as my husband is still struggling with the hamstring injury he got at Christmas, which nearly prevented him from running London marathon. The first mile is pretty much downhill and on a very quiet country lane, rather than actual trails. Even though a higher proportion of this route is on tarmac and it hadn’t rained for ages, I wore my trail shoes. They’re good for uneven surfaces – and there were a lot of those!

At just over a mile, we got onto proper trails and a proper hill!  Leg 10 actually has more downhill than uphill in total, but when you have to climb, you really have to climb. Ninety per cent of people walked up this hill, me included. I tried breaking into a run every now and then, but was soon forced to walk again.

There are a couple of small, narrow bridges near the start of the route. As soon as I’d crossed the second one, I tripped over a tree root and went straight down on my hands and knees! Luckily I didn’t twist anything, just slightly jarred my wrists. So I was straight back up on my feet and running/ walking.

My memories of exactly what came at what point are slightly hazy, so forgive me if I’m wrong. But everything looked familiar from the recce and I was definitely reaching landmarks earlier than we did then. At the top of the hill, there is the oldest war memorial in Britain. Things were fairly flat for quite a long time once we’d got to the top of the hill.

There were a lot of gates to get through and I found myself at the front of a sort of peloton, opening the gates for everyone behind me. I tried to keep the gate open for people behind me as it’s only polite and only causes a delay of a second or two. After a while, the man behind me went in front and took his turn at being chief gate opener.

Sometimes we were running in the open through fields and sometimes we were running on very narrow trails in dark woodland. We ran through a golf course and round the edge of Bath racecourse.

The views were absolutely stunning! It was hot, but not unbearably so. After getting very hot and sweaty on the recce (a couple of days before the June heatwave really kicked in), I’d invested in a new running belt, rather than running with a hydration vest, which just makes me hotter.

There was a very long and uneven downhill. The path was even worse than the one at Trelissick parkrun. At the end of this, there is a downhill through a field and I absolutely flew through that, because I didn’t have to worry about my footing.

We were then in the village of Weston and only about two miles from the finish line. We then had the most ridiculous climbs. Nobody around me ran up these hills.

And then we were coming into Bath! Down through a park, in front of the famous Royal Crescent, round a roundabout, through shopping streets… The two runners in front of me weren’t always visible and we were changing direction frequently. This was where we’d gone slightly wrong on our recce. So I just took to asking the many shoppers and tourists ‘Did the runners go that way?’. Then people were cheering me and shouting my name as I flew through the crowded streets. There were marshals pointing the way and then there were big crowds. I turned a corner and the street was lined with people cheering. I raced to the finish line outside Bath Abbey.

I finished the 9.85 mile route in 1:34:18, according to my watch – a pace of 9:35 minutes per mile. My husband finished six minutes after me and I’d never seen him run so fast to the finish line.

What an incredible experience! I hadn’t expected the crowds and the excitement at the end. Running into Cold Ashton on my previous leg had been much more low key. We absolutely loved running Leg 10 of the Cotswold Way Relay. I’m looking forward to running another leg next year.