Practical guidance before and during your journey.
Like the credencial on the Camino de Santiago, the Cotswold Way Walkers Passport is a booklet you carry on the trail and have stamped at participating businesses along the route—so you can record your progress and keep a physical souvenir of the walk.
The Cotswold Way Association runs the scheme: you buy the passport from the CWA shop, collect stamps at the businesses listed in the booklet as you walk, then keep it as a memento—or purchase a completion certificate to frame. How it works, stamping points, and ordering are all covered on the Cotswold Way Walkers Passport page.
The trail is waymarked, but you should never rely on a phone alone. Carry a paper map at the scale you are comfortable reading in wind and rain—typically OSExplorer (1:25 000) sheets that cover your stages, or the dedicated National Trail mapping where available. A map lets you see the wider area, spot escape routes, and stay oriented if waymarks are missing or ambiguous.
Guidebooks add step-by-step description, background on places along the route, and practical notes for each day's walking. Use them alongside your map: the book for narrative and checkpoints, the map for position and alternatives.
For planning on a computer or importing into a GPS app, you can download the trail as GeoJSON. For an interactive map and trail tools in the browser, see cotswoldway.app.