Untamed heather, fragrant white blossoms and rabbits darting among the daffodils. Sumitra Senapaty follows the path less taken and walks through a culture in English countryside

It’s as if one were walking through the illustrations of a children’s book. Brightly coloured daffodils and primroses sparkle on the landscape and decorate adorable little cottages.... I almost expect Wonderland’s Alice or Winnie the Pooh to emerge.

This couldn’t possibly be real. But it is. I am walking the Cotswolds – as indeed, I have been in many another area of the British Isles – by the most winding, wayward and idiosyncratic of routes. And I can’t think of any better way, as it gives you a chance to peer through gaps in the hedges, to discover all the secret places of the Cotswolds, unnoticed by the speeding traveller.

On the map it’s a kind of no-man’s land where the borders of Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire are knotted together, but on the ground it’s a succession of quiet delights; old manor houses, ancient churches, glorious views, changing weather and the kind of pubs it’s difficult to pass by. (A ‘cot’ is a sheep enclosure, and ‘wolds’ means rolling hillsides, so it’s not hard to see how this place got its name.) Wild heather and daffodils are a striking contrast to the old stone walls, along with foxes and barn owls that cry clear in the night. The air is thick with pollen, heady with the smell of parsley and grass heads. I hear the bleating of ewes and their lambs, and the incessant call of the cuckoo. I see pheasants too, and a partridge, and rabbits darting into my path, and crazily back again, wild-eyed and bob-tailed. I search for the market town Moreton in Marsh and its reputed pub, The Plough. Dusk falls quickly as I settle into a cosy corner and study the chalked menu on the wall. “What’s your preference?” shouts the bar owner. “I’d recommend the Shepherd’s Pie this evening.” I take his advice and by the time I finish the hearty meal, am marvelling at the freshness of farm grown food.

I have to backtrack a bit to reach Bourton-on-the-Water, where typically, loads of holidaymakers eat ice cream. So pretty and tidy that I almost feel like scraping the mud off my shoes! The River Windrush flows serenely along the main street. Stone buildings facing the stream are hung with baskets of flowers. In spring, daffodils flourish here, while in summer it is the white blossoms of hawthorn and cow parsley.

Sheep fill the meadows, their offspring so tiny that from afar they look like white rocks. Across the river are the cottages, with the unbelievable specimen of the rambler Rosa filipes Kiftsgate, which measures 80 by 90 by 50 feet. In full bloom, its fragrant white blossoms all but hide the copper beech tree around which it climbs. Halfway across the Cotswolds, near Cirencester, the garden writer, Rosemary Verey, fashioned a little corner of paradise. Sold after her death, Barnsley House has recently become a hotel, but the gardens are open to visitors, who look out for its famous purple Laburnum blooms in May.

Walking from one of these lovely places to another, I stop by at one of the pub-eateries that have sprung up all over the Cotswolds. Besides traditional British beer, they serve quality wines and well-cooked organic food; there is the Village Pub at Barnsley, or the Churchill Arms near Hidcote, or the King’s Arms at Stow-on-the-Wold (which occupies a hilltop, giving rise to the saying, “Stow-on-the-Wold, where the wind blows cold.”) While you are at it, you can poke around the antiques shops in Burford and Stow, where Huntington stocks truly old stuff, from medieval to Queen Anne. Bright lights – even traffic lights – are few and far between, but there’s a summer opera in a barn at Tweeksbury – further food for the mind when the charms of peace and quiet start to wear a little bit thin.

But it is the homely rhythms of life in the Cotswolds that sustain fellow walkers. Buying and roasting spring Cotswold lamb and serving it with asparagus from Evesham, near Broadway, and matchless Jersey Royal potatoes. Watching the lovely swans, as they glide through the Bourton waters. Picking up the daily papers at the newsagent down the street. Best of all, the sights and smells of country, filled with roses, delphiniums, peonies and sweet peas. The directions in the guide seem simple enough: “Take the path by the hedgerow, cross the stile and follow the path across the field.” But then when I look around, hedgerows and stiles are all around, and there are green fields sprinkled with flowers beyond them all. I am on a walk – a many mile ramble through the Cotswold Way. (It is an unusually long footpath marked with white dots and arrows.)

To the English, walking long distances is a matter of course; for me, it is the appeal of walking through a culture: climbing over a 6,000-year-old dry stone wall one morning and stopping at a cheese monger’s shop that afternoon. The thatched-roof cottages with roses and beech forests conjure up images of hobbits and sorcerers, quite fittingly since J.R.R. Tolkien lived nearby and was, in part, inspired by this landscape while writing The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I walk within inches of people’s houses, through churchyards filled with weathered tombstones, over windy golf courses where sheep have the right of way, through ancient hill forts with Saxon ghosts, and into villages where I discover cottages that have names like Treacle Mary’s, Rosary Cottage, Harmony, and Humblebee. The pretty little cottages and manor houses have the first flush of roses appearing; Albertine, Sanders White and Gloire de Dijon, clambering up and cascading down, amidst deep purple irises and lacy candy tuft. I also discover that each village has its own ale or bitter with names like Old Hooky, Cotswold Genesis and Old Speckled Hen.

I love the physicalness of it. When I reach the top of a hill, even if I’m gasping for breath, I feel so powerful. And even more enjoyable to me is the sight of the sheep.... Makes me want to ‘stop and stare’, to stand beside a murmuring brook, to sit on a summer’s day at a table outside the pub, watching the village and soaking in flowery scents. The Cotswolds is giving me a lot of quiet pleasure. After considerable amount of walking, I enjoy sitting down nearly as much as my meal, a plowman’s lunch, with slabs of wheat bread, a healthy chunk of cheddar, salad, a dark, spicy chutney and a glass of bitter, which I’d call beer. The next obvious attraction is cream tea, served with scones, jam and clotted cream. Since I’d been walking all day, I tuck in shamelessly.

Later, I stroll down the street to see a 10th-century Norman church, wonderfully decorated for a harvest festival, with corn, pumpkins and wheat. After a day of traipsing through the enchanting Cotswolds, I stay at the Moretons Farmhouse dating back to the early 1800s, at Bredon near Tewkesbury, 35 miles from Bourton, as the crow flies. Not before long, I sip a sherry and sink into a piping hot bath, groaning with pleasure. The plumbing’s been upgraded since yesteryears; my bath is deep and hot and drains perfectly. These cottages are fully equipped down to a needle and thread; a barn turned into a heated indoors pool, the complete works of Shakespeare, even a grand piano. Bredon has two general shops, one with a post office and bakery. The village also has a pottery, a hairdresser’s and a teddy bear shop.

The next day I overdose on flowers and nature at Duntisbourne Leer, one of the most peaceful, hidden villages in all the Cotswolds. It is a snug village looking in on itself – I hear someone closing a door on one side of the sloping village, and the sound echoes sharply across to the other. I gasp with pleasure when I come by the village brook. It seems just like a pretty cottage garden with bean wigwams and sweet pea canes, and rows of blue delphiniums, and sweet Williams, all mixed up with lines of feathery-headed carrots, fresh green onions and leafy potatoes, while frilly clove pinks edge the lettuce beds. And everywhere, the peonies are full out, at their blowsy, wanton best – boudoir pink, paper white and lipstick red. When I lean over the stonewall, their smell is indescribably sweet.

North of Leer I explore tiny villages, each one seemingly more memorable than the last. But there is no clear winner. How can I choose between UpperSlaughter and Lower Slaughter? Or between Stanton with its 11th century church, and Chipping Camden with its working marketplace, or Bourton-on-the-Water with its stone footbridges spanning the midtown stream? It is late afternoon when finally I stand high above Cheltenham, gazing out over its enormous valley. A fellow walker points across a sparkling river to the misty western hills, and says, “Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon are just beyond there.” I stride downhill, hero like, peppy and hungry again.

Sometimes, country folk make you feel as if your ‘many’ miles are no great accomplishment. I hear of an 80-year-old woman who has done the 200-mile Coast-to-Coast path, and I get to meet an elderly gentleman who has plans to walk from a remote corner of England to the remotest spot in Scotland. And now, at home, I miss it: the around-the-corner surprises of the path, the fresh air that smells of sheep and hawthorn, the daffodils, the farmers, the cheerful voices of the B&B landlords and ladies. I find myself wishing that life should have little white dots to mark the way.