At Hayles Fruit Farm the apples are grown, pressed, pasteurised and bottled on the same ground. The shop shelves carry named juices: Red Pippin, Jonagold, Egremont Russet, Cox's Orange Pippin, Worcester Pearmain. There is apple and raspberry, apple and mango, and a cider called Badger's, still made by traditional methods. Around the juice sits the rest of the farm shop — homegrown seasonal fruit and vegetables, and produce from local makers.
This is the working centre of Hailes, a hamlet at the foot of the Cotswold scarp, two miles north-east of Winchcombe. There is no pub in the hamlet itself; for that you walk or drive into Winchcombe, which keeps several. What Hailes has instead is the Orchard Kitchen, the farm's own cafe, where the cooking leans on brunch — Eggs Benedict, a Full English, homemade cakes, barista coffee and loose-leaf tea, with the farm's own apple juice on the table.
In season you can pick your own: strawberries and plums earlier in the year, apples and pears later, pumpkins as autumn comes on. Timing shifts with the weather, so it is worth checking what is ready before you set out.
The farm also runs two signed nature trails around its lake and working land — a shorter loop meant for young children and older walkers, and a longer one. You collect a map from the shop, keep an eye out for farm traffic, and take the pushchair only if weather conditions allow. It is the kind of low, unhurried walk you can do before lunch and repeat after it.
For something longer, the Cotswold Way runs close. The section from Wood Stanway climbs steeply onto the escarpment, opens out across the Vale of Evesham, passes the Iron Age earthworks of Beckbury Camp, then drops down to Hailes Abbey before carrying on into Winchcombe. It is 5.4 miles of proper up and down rather than a stroll.
The abbey is the reason Hailes has a name at all. Richard, Earl of Cornwall and brother of Henry III, vowed in 1242 to found a monastery after surviving a storm at sea; four years later twenty Cistercian monks and ten lay brothers arrived from Beaulieu, and the church was consecrated in 1251. In 1270 Richard's son Edmund gave the abbey a relic said to be Christ's blood, and the pilgrims followed. It paid for a grand new east end, and it put Hailes into Chaucer. As English Heritage's Dr Michael Carter puts it, "Thanks to the relic of the Holy Blood, the name of Hailes was familiar to popes and kings."
The relic did not survive the Reformation. Reformers variously called it duck's blood, an unctuous gum, or honey coloured with saffron, and on Christmas Eve 1539 Abbot Stephen Sagar and twenty-one monks surrendered the monastery. The roofs were stripped and much of the church pulled down. What stands now is carved stone in open foothills, with a small museum holding heraldic floor tiles and one of the oldest surviving medieval spectacle frames. Fault-finding visitation records complain that the monks kept private cells, slipped off to taverns, and let weeds and thistles grow in the cloister.
Beside the ruins is the church, so small it is easy to walk past. Its dedication is unknown and the earliest work is twelfth century, but the reason to go in is the wall paintings — a giant St Christopher on the north wall, a hunting scene on the south, and chancel schemes of coats of arms, saints, lions, eagles and mythical animals, some painted in the early fourteenth century, around 1320 or perhaps a decade earlier. The interior has changed little since the seventeenth century, down to the square pulpit and its octagonal sounding board.
Getting here takes a little planning. The nearest mainline station is Cheltenham, ten miles off, with a bus, taxi or lift for the last stretch; the 606 will drop you at Greet for a mile-and-three-quarter walk in. Hayles Abbey Halt sits on the steam railway nearby, though not every train stops, so check the timetable before relying on it.
Late in the day, when the coaches have gone and the abbey grass is empty, the water in the fruit farm's lake is still moving, and there is not much else to hear.
