Country Diary: Tetbury

Fosse Way, the old Roman road which rides the limestone ridge for most of its distance from Exeter to Lincoln, has often been incorporated into the modern road system, which then shows the arrow-straight character of its origins. It passes Tetbury three miles to the east, and at this point, where it crosses the minor road to Crudwell, it is nothing more than a straight farm track, marked as a byway and recorded on the Ordnance Survey map only as a Euro-constituency boundary. I cycled this way on Tuesday morning, as a variation from my normal circuit to the west of the town, and crossing the line of the Roman road I reflected, on a very cold morning, how the legions would have fared in these conditions a couple of millennia ago.

I rode beyond Crudwell, a 12-mile return that morning, in temperatures which never rose above -2C. It was woolly hat and gloves for me, but how did the legions do if they were on the march in winter conditions - leather sandals and animal skins would have been about their top-whack outfits, and a sheepskin if they were very lucky. We know they recruited locally, so most legionaries would have been north European and acclimatised to a cold winter. Cirencester, only half a day's march from my crossing point, and a major centre in Roman times as Corinium, would have been a welcome destination with fires, food and the contemporary equivalent of rest and recreation. Exercise opportunities have been very limited for me, due to the snow-covered ground and ice.

After four days of what seemed like a period of real winter weather with hard frosts after a blanket of snow, a warm front swept in from the west, and a rapid thaw ensued. The countryside showed the impact of the cold snap, and residual snow lined the shadowed side of the drystone dykes.