There are 70 legal Rights of Way within our Parish. Some of them are tiny (see if you can find no's CK28or CK46 on the footpath map to be found on the GCC website), but others wend their way across the AONB, sometimes coinciding with the Cotswold Way or Cheltenham Circular Path, but more often taking an independent route.

This link to the map on the GCC website may help you to look at where they all are. Expand the map until pink lines start to appear. Those are the Rights of Way. Then hover over to get the code for a particular path.

Rights of way online map | Highways (gloucestershire.gov.uk)

So that the community can make the most of these footpaths, the Parish Council have produced a number of leaflets giving directions for circular walks around Charlton Kings. Whether you want just to have a wander around the village or to set out into the country, you will find a walk for you. Just drop into the CKPC Office and ask one of the staff there to show you the guides. Or they can be downloaded from our website here.

This walk is less than 2 ¼ miles. It starts from our own Parish Office in Church Piece. There is a bit of a steady climb up three fields, but the reward is some wonderful views and then a lovely descent through Timbercombe Wood. And you come back past two pubs in the parish centre!

If you fancy something a little longer, try Rural Walk 4. It starts and finishes at Dunkertons (coffee before, cider after?) and goes uphill from Capel Lane. Again you get some superb views, but also the chance to see some of the wonderful volunteer work CKPC has been supporting to restore Ravensgate Common.

We are always trying to both maintain and improve the Rights of Way. One feature of this work relates to installing kissing gates where stiles used to be. Obviously this makes access for all a much more genuine and realistic aspiration.

The costs and work for these improvement rest largely with Gloucester County Council, but we do have a RoW budget for Parish Council work too.

We have two vital groups of volunteers working on all this. If you are wondering who carried out the installation of a new kissing gate, installed stones in a muddy spot, or constructed these steps as an improvement to CK23 near The White House...

…then the answer is almost certainly our local members of The Cotswold Wardens. However we also have footpath volunteers linked directly to the Parish Council. They work on lighter tasks such as cutting back brambles, long grass, etc. and try to keep the paths in the condition shown here on CK6 near Mill Lane.

They have also been known to stop for coffee and cake, and even to meet for an evening in a local pub. If you would like to join in, the best thing to do is to contact Charlton Kings Parish Office, where the staff will pass on your details to Councillors Holt and Gosling who try to keep an overview of all this.

Look to see some work on improving CK3, the route from Greenway Lane up to Battledown. And we hope to make CK67, which descends quite steeply from Ravensgate Common, a little safer and more manageable.

Visit this page to know more about our Rights of Way!