Walk no 3 - 19 June 2026

A farm walk hosted and led by Nick Bumford of Guiting Estate, followed by tea, cakes and a discussion on the theme of the future of farming

June is the pearl of summer, shining with warmth and joy – L M Mongomery

In stark contrast to our May walk, the sun was beating down as we gathered at Manor Farm, Guiting Power, for our June walk. After the heat wave in late May and the weeks of wet and cloudy weather since, it felt like high summer, though we were still a few days short of the solstice. 

Nick introduced us to the Guiting Estate, where he has been manager for 38 years.  There is no longer a family member in residence but the Trust which runs the estate (and a significant amount of neighbouring farmland) remains committed to the family values of productive and sustainable agriculture, thriving village communities, education and protecting the spirit of place, including vernacular architecture.  Nick is an entrepreneur both for the environment and food production and the estate shows the benefit of long term thinking, care for nature and a commitment to new enterprises.

We began in the farmyard with a quick tour of the hemp business, which produces natural material for house insulation.  You need a licence to grow hemp but it was once a traditional crop and has multiple potential benefits.  Also in the farmyard is mypower.com, an energy company that specialises in barn roof and farm-level installations. This is revolutionising the way Nick runs the business and bringing costs down. The capital investment should repay in 3-5 years.

We then walked up the hill, stopping first to admire the grassland verges, dominated this year by oxeye daisy but bursting with life of all kinds.  Anna treated us to the history of the Glorious Cotswold Grasslands project in which the farm has participated since the outset, and we saw the evidence in the rich flora and fauna all around us: a hare bounded past us as we walked.  As we moved on we met Simon, a villager who leads a group of volunteer tree wardens, who have planted and look after thousands of native trees, often as hedgerow trees among the 33km of hedgerow on the estate.  Andy then told us about his role as a BTO bird recorder, focusing on vulnerable species including skylark, yellowhammer, whitethroat and corn bunting.

At the top of the hill – 900 ft above sea level – we absorbed the stunning views in all directions.  It’s a distinctive high Cotswold landscape:  horn and corn, with dense patches of woodland and thick hedgerows interspersed with stone-built barns and small villages nestling in the valleys. Manor Farm’s new barns are huge, deliberately, but well located to minimise their impact. 

The Upper Windrush rises here and there are otter and kingfisher if you are lucky enough to see them. A new feature in the landscape is wide bird feeding strips:  land taken out of arable to provide cover and seed-rich strips to encourage farmland birds.  The estate feeds wild birds in the winter on hard surfaces.

Beginning our return to the farmyard we stopped at a 19^th century stone barn and Anna told us about her owl monitoring role.  After a dreadful year last year because of the drought, there are record numbers of chicks this year, many of which she is ringing.  The farm also has swifts, swallows and housemartins – a glorious richness. The area is rich in archaeological remains, from Iron Age, Roman and medieval periods.  It lends character and depth to the landscape about which the former owner was passionate.

Our final stop was above the village, where we heard about the estate’s commitment to support local families with protected rents and to prevent these lovely villages from becoming commuter or second-home dominated.  We talked about the challenges of providing affordable rural housing, frustrations with local planning and the pressures on the Cotswolds from the Government’s housing targets.

Back in the farmyard for tea, Jenny Phelps of FWAG treated us to an inspiring talk on landscape-scale collaboration and the need for farmers to work together to understand their land, the wider pressures on it, and how they can make themselves more resilient to the challenges ahead.  FWAG provides advice and facilitation, and is working with farmers to strengthen local collaboration and find solutions.  She is passionate that these solutions need to be based on micro-realities (such as water misconnections) as well as big picture ambitions.  She showed us maps of the water system underpinning the Cotswolds, the draft Local Nature Recovery Strategy and the pinpointed water connector failures in Cirencester alone – shocking.

The discussion that followed ranged from the brilliant work that is flowing from farm clusters like the NE Cotswolds Farm Cluster to the positive role Gloucestershire’s County Farms aim to play in their local communities, to the pressures on individual farmers, to the poor water quality of the rivers Evenlode and Windrush.  Water quality and quantity is a recurring theme in our discussions, with huge risks of flooding (Cirencester alone has £1bn worth of flood risk) and pollution. We heard some good news from Thames Water which has funding to help on-farm water storage, flood prevention and river restoration; and of the good (though inevitably long term) work being done by the Environment Agency and the Severn Rivers Trust.  We heard that there is some funding available, including from FiPL (Funding in Protected Landscapes) via Cotswold National Landscape.  We heard from the RAU that collaborations like the Cotswold Arable Study Group act as incubators for new ideas, and that regenerative principles are shaping many future ideas and entrants; but we heard from Bromfield Housing Association just how challenging it is to provide essential rural infrastructure like housing and transport.

Ultimately it is clear that no institution or individual can operate in isolation, and that there is a growing network of collaborators of all kinds working for sustainable solutions at both the macro level and locally, where each area’s special circumstances and needs can be addressed and turned to positive benefit with the help of facilitators like FWAG, farm clusters and funders.

We ended by sharing our warm thanks and admiration of Nick for his deep knowledge, entrepreneurial approach and willingness to share ideas and experiences; and gratitude to Jenny for her visionary approach, generous style and deep commitment to finding a sustainable and viable future for farming in Gloucestershire.