Coberley does not announce itself. The village sits low in the Churn valley, in a dispersed parish of about five and a half square miles, with the A435 and A436 cutting through the wider ground rather than the centre. One way in is on foot: the six-mile circular from Seven Springs crosses both main roads, drops over a farm track and hill, and delivers you into the village.
Food and drink sit a short way off, at Cockleford, where the Green Dragon Inn keeps a 17th-century room going with beamed ceilings, stone-flagged floors and log fires. The furniture is worth a second look, handmade by Robert Thompson, the "Mouseman of Kilburn." The kitchen runs to steak-and-kidney suet pudding, beer-battered fish with crushed peas, a fish pie of hake, cod, smoked haddock and prawns, marinated lamb steak, and a squash, brie and beetroot tart, with Butty Bach, Otter and Sharp's Atlantic on the bar. One visitor, Marc Jones, called it a "Lovely country pub, we loved the log fire. Lots of character." There are nine bedrooms if you want to stay put.
Attached to the inn is the Green Dragon Shop, which covers the basics, bread, butter, eggs, milk, meat, fruit and vegetables, then keeps going into olive oil, balsamic vinegar, anchovies, passata and pasta, Salcombe ice cream, Cornish ale and Bordeaux wine. In a village with no shop of its own, it is the nearest thing to a larder.
The one landmark you might have planned a stay around, the Seven Springs pub beside the A436, is closed. The walking route still uses its site as a parking point and marker.
To reach the church of St Giles you walk again. The way runs through the private grounds of Coberley Court, along a signed and gated track about a quarter-mile east of the centre; the church is usually open and regularly used, but check locally before setting out. It rewards the effort. The building has 12th-century origins, was enlarged in the mid-14th century, and had its nave and chancel rebuilt in the Early English style by John Middleton in 1869–72. On the tower, above the Berkeley arms, is a sundial dated and initialled "P.C. 1693" for Paul Castleman.
Inside is a stranger inventory. Sir Giles Berkeley's heart is buried here. There is a 15th-century Crucifixion, tomb effigies of Sir Thomas Berkeley, Lady Joan Berkeley and a small girl, and a low-side window that once held an internal bell rung during Mass. A piece of 12th-century chevron stonework has been reused in the south chapel, which Sir Thomas built around 1340. The manor here is also, by long tradition, where Dick Whittington grew up, though Pauntley claims his birth and the village wears the connection lightly.
Beneath the fields nearby lies more than the surface shows. The scheduled Coberley Roman villa, an H-shaped complex about 75 metres by 50, stood near the Churn and two and a half kilometres off Ermin Street, the road between Roman Gloucester and Cirencester. It was occupied through the second and third centuries, with continued use well into the late Roman period. Metal detectorists turned up part of a geometric mosaic in 2002–03, Time Team excavated in 2007, and the site proved to have made its own tiles, and perhaps bricks. The best mosaic probably floored the triclinium, the dining room, with flowers, a guilloche knot and a cup worked into its grid. It is buried archaeology, not advertised as a visitor attraction.
For open ground there is plenty. The parish footpaths thread limestone hills, woodland and pasture; Crickley Hill, on the western edge, holds a Neolithic settlement and an Iron Age fort and is now a country park. The Seven Springs circular is graded moderate, with steep slopes and stiles, and is not presented as pushchair-friendly.
Cheltenham is four miles north, with the nearest station and the nearest substantial centre for shops; Cirencester is ten miles south, at the far end of the route 51 bus that threads through Seven Springs, though stops can sit some distance from the door and live times are worth checking. Between them, Coberley keeps to its valley.
