Gloucestershire is home to an abundance of beautiful places to see wildflowers – and now a Cotswold Way walking trail in the county has been named one of the best in the UK to spot native blooms.
A new study from online florist Flying Flowers ranked the Cotswold Way route between Painswick and King's Stanley in the top 20 out of more than 800.
The 13.4km route placed 17th in the list with an overall rating of 4.8 stars, offering keen-eyed walkers the chance to spot bluebells, meadow buttercups, cow parsley, cowslips, ramsons and wood spurge.
The news comes after Stroud District Council added Cotswold Way walks to its free walking trails app for the first time this May 2025, including a Painswick to King's Stanley route.
With searches for 'wildflower walks' having increased by 300 per cent in the last year, Flying Flowers is aiming to shine a spotlight on lesser-known but highly-rated wildflower walks, using data from AllTrails and TripAdvisor to compile its list.
Head of Flying Flowers, Sandra Varley, said: 'In the busier summer months, you probably won’t have a trail entirely to yourself, but choosing lesser-reviewed, highly-rated routes gives you a better chance of enjoying wildflower walks with fewer crowds.
'Wildflower enthusiasts will have the best experience visiting floral trails between April and August, as this tends to be the peak time for botanicals to bloom, improving chances of seeing a wide array of wildflowers.
'If you’re planning to explore some of the UK’s beautiful wildflower trails, iPhones have a great built in feature for identifying plants, all you have to do is take a picture and scroll up on the image to its details and you’ll get an instant wildflower ID.'
Gloucestershire bursts into bloom multiple times throughout the year, from carpets of snowdrops in the winter to bluebells and sunny yellow daffodils in spring to wildflowers in the summer.
For more wild walking inspiration, check out SoGlos's dedicated Outdoors section at soglos.com/outdoors.
