The Cotswolds

If Bath is the quintessential English town, then the adjoining Cotswolds are the epitome of the English countryside. Spanning nearly 800 square miles and designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Cotswolds are a tumble of green hills studded with dozens of impossibly quaint villages and ridiculously charming towns, sporting utterly English names like Moreton-in-Marsh and Bourton-on-the-Water (along with slightly more alarming ones like Lower Slaughter). You know those b&w images of quaint overgrown garden lanes that come pre-inserted into frames you buy? Chances are good they’re from the Cotswolds. All those almost nauseatingly romantic oil paintings of thatched stone cottages with a wisp of smoke coming out of the chimney at dusk? Not imagined or contrived; those are probably actual scenes from the Cotswolds. Those period-piece movies and TV shows set in European villages anytime between the 15th and 19th centuries? Not sets. Those are filmed in actual villages in the Cotswolds. All they had to do was move the cars.

To wrap up our time with Amy’s sister Rachel and her husband Scott, we were staying with them in the heart of this lovely area for three nights, in a village that was small even by Cotswold standards: Lower Swell, population 405. (In case you’re wondering, yes, there is an Upper Swell too, a mile up the creek, but it’s even smaller still.) Best I can tell, our little hamlet has a church, a school, a village hall, and a pub, the Golden Ball. Rachel had found us a lovely, historic old cottage here, which is the only variety they have. According to a carved stone placard on the front wall, it was built in 1595. For perspective, that’s a full quarter century before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in what would become, much later, the United States. According to that same placard, it’s named Ley’s View Cottage. Which is also the address—Ley’s View Cottage, Lower Swell—because none of the homes here have street numbers or any other such addresses. Seriously.

The lopsided structure is built of stone and large, rough-hewn timbers that are anything but straight or level. Upstairs, the floors careen about such that you feel a little drunk walking across them. Downstairs, the beams dip so low in the living room that I had to duck to keep from knocking myself out. Same with the front door. Meanwhile, the staircase is an extremely vertical, twisting set of irregular wood blocks that the kids had to climb up like a jungle gym. But the kitchen and bathrooms have been thoroughly modernized, it has plenty of space, and it was all very comfortable. There is even a small, private back yard with a dining table and an apple tree drooping with almost-ripe fruit. Both the front and back of the cottage look out over open, grassy fields, and other than when a car drives by, the place is utterly…serene. Just the chirping of birds to break the silence. It’s hard to imagine a town of any size could be this quiet, and we wondered whether there was anybody living in the adjacent cottages, until we saw an older gentleman next door working in his garden. Quietly, of course. Because anybody who chooses to live here likes it that way. So I can only imagine what he thought when three screaming children piled out of a van and into the house next door!

The downside of being in such a sleepy place is that there ain’t much to do. Even the pub was closed since the entire staff had COVID! So after we settled in and the kids played for a while, we decided to set out on foot for a larger town a mile away, Stow-on-the-Wold. In the hopes of proving that we weren’t as obnoxious as we seemed, I had approached the neighbor and respectfully asked him the best way to get there, and he indicated there was a foot trail along the road. Turns out the Cotswolds and in fact all of England is riddled with well-used foot paths, some of them probably quite ancient, which run along streams and rivers, traverse farm fields, and cut through forests—including a lot of private property. But the UK has afforded this walking path network special protection as a public right of way (as well as granting the public a “right to roam” off-trail on a lot of private property). I had heard about these walking paths from a friend and wanted to try them out, and the one to Stow was initially quite good…until it devolved into a narrow track on the edge on the road with brambles on one side and fast-moving cars on the other. No matter. We made it to the town without incident and quickly started exploring.

We decided to dine at The Porch House, a fine old establishment which claims to have opened in 947 AD and bills itself as the oldest pub in England. Turns out this is not an uncommon claim—we visited another pub in Scotland a couple weeks later that asserted that it was the oldest in the UK—but the Porch House did make the #3 spot on this list, which suggests that it’s pretty legit. But however old it actually is, it’s definitely a charming place, with a massive old fireplace and great blackened ceiling beams looming even lower than the ones in our cottage. (I guess the English used to be quite a bit shorter!) We enjoyed a wonderful meal and some good ciders. Here and most other places we went, we were very impressed with pub grub, which sometimes gets a bad rap. We finally hiked back to our cottage for the evening, but since it still wasn’t dark yet—you gotta love these endless summer days—Amy and I went out for an evening stroll through own little village, including the old church and cemetery.

The next day, Rachel was keen to go visit a palace or a mansion, so everybody piled into the van to head to nearby Blenheim Palace, which modestly bills itself as “Britain’s Greatest Palace”. No, this is not one of the queen’s many residences. It’s the palatial estate of the Dukes of Marlborough, though it’s perhaps better known as the birthplace of Winston Churchill. As far as country homes go, it’s pretty spectacular. These days, the place has been transformed into a giant playground for families, complete with a small steam train, several lakes, a garden maze, and a Beatrix Potter playground, all top-notch. In fact, the kids were having so much fun frolicking around the grounds that there was barely time to see the palace itself! The weather was perfect, perhaps even too hot, and everybody had a great time.

Except me—I opted to skip the palace and stay home at the cottage that day, ostensibly to catch up on this blog. After several days cohabitating with Rachel’s tribe, this introvert needed some time to himself! And the peace and quiet of the cottage was the perfect balm. By 5pm, I was rejuvenated, and sped-walked back to Stow-on-the-Wold to meet the fam there for dinner.

By the next morning, we realized we had only a day left in the Cotswolds and yet had barely seen them. Based on the recommendations of our host plus a little research of my own, by breakfast, I had whipped up a small driving route that would take us through some of the most picturesque nearby towns. Everybody seemed to like the idea, so we piled into the van again, with Scott at the wheel, for a jaunt through the countryside.

Our first stop was Blockley, population 2,041, which is well off the beaten path even by Cotswold standards. While everybody popped into a lovely little café for coffee and pastries, I immediately went wandering to the town church next door, where I learned that both the church and the town were the backdrop for a British TV show, Father Brown, set in the 1950s. Of course, this town could just as easily have passed as a village in the 1850s. While the kids played on a large playground in the beautifully manicured park, I circumnavigated the town, which didn’t take long. We were all enchanted by Blockley, and even though we saw a half-dozen other towns that day, some prettier, we all agreed that it was our favorite.

Our next stop was Chipping Campden, an old market town at the very north end of the Cotswolds. (“Chipping” is from Old English “cēping”, which means market). Being granted a charter to hold a weekly market was a special distinction amongst English towns, and the ones who received it usually because thriving economic centers—which was certainly so with Chipping Campden. The Cotswolds Tourism site depicts it well: “Its elegant High Street is a delight, described by the historian, G.M. Trevelyan, as ‘the most beautiful village street now left in the island’: a broad gentle curve flanked on either side by an unbroken sweep of buildings covering a host of architectural styles, with buildings dating back to the 14th century.” In fact, the high street is so wide that a series of narrow buildings occupy the middle of it, including the town hall and a very old market building, built in 1627, its paving stones “worn away by hundreds of years of busy trade“. I was intrigued to find a large round plaque on the ground in front of it, identical to one I had seen in front of Bath Abbey. Turns out the pair of plaques mark the beginning and end of the 102-mile Cotswolds Way, a footpath that runs the length of the Cotswolds. What are the chances that I would discover both markers accidentally? After a fairly forgettable lunch, we explored the town for a bit, popping into some shops. It was here that we started noticing houses with actual thatched roofs, some that clearly had just been installed. The Cotswaldians keep it real!

We continued onto Broadway, which bills itself as the northern gateway to the Cotswolds. As per its name, it too has a wide High Street that just keeps getting wider, until it eventually turns into a big triangular village green. Here, we wandered into various shops, art galleries, a toy store, and even a place scarcely larger than a closet selling locally-made ciders and ales. We finally ended up in a very English tea shop, Tisanes, where we indulged in afternoon tea, including scones and clotted cream, on the back patio. By this point, it was becoming clear that I was a little more enchanted with these towns than everybody else–or at least their attention was wavering more than mine. As evidenced by the fact that they all drove off without me when I lingered a little too long taking some more photos. Okay, point taken!

By the time we reached the next town, Winchcombe, we didn’t even get out of the car, and decided to make a beeline from there to our final stop, Bourton-on-the-Water. We were hoping to catch an attraction there that we thought might actually hold the kids’ attention: the Model Village, a 1/9th  scale replica of the village center, complete with bonsaied trees and shrubberies. In fact, it even included a miniature version of itself, the Model Village…which included yet an even smaller version, after which I don’t think the model makers could physically make things any smaller! The kids did find the place fascinating, getting down on hands & knees to peer inside the child-size cottages and shops, many of which were fully furnished. But I’m pretty sure I was even more intrigued, taking photos of each little street so I could go out and compare them to the real-life versions afterwards. But as adorable as the miniature village was, it turned out the full-size one was even more endearing. As suggested by the town’s name, it straddles a river, the Windrush, more aptly described as a wide creek. It bisects a a wide shady green in the town center and is traversed by an abundance of small bridges. (The arrangement has earned the town the somewhat silly title of the “Venice of the Cotswolds”.) It’s all effortlessly charming, making it one of the most popular towns in the area, and we were surprised how many folks were out enjoying it on a Monday evening. Some sat under the trees, some on benches, some on the riverbank dangling their feet in the water. But not our kids! Within minutes, they had jumped fully into the icy creek—which luckily was only a few inches deep. We spent at least an hour there, the kids splashing around in the water while we enjoyed the ambience.

Finally, Rachel and her family went off to have dinner around 7pm. I was tired of eating—it seemed to be all we’d been doing all day!—and was obsessed with checking out more of the local footpaths before we left. So Griffin and I set out on an ambitious four mile cross-country walk back to our cottage, utilizing a combination of several footpaths I had looked up on my phone. I was surprised to find that we were in good company, passing several other folks on the wide, well-marked path to Lower Slaughter, another small village at least as lovely as any of the others we’d seen that day. (AFAIK, there were no bloody battle fought here. The name comes from old English “slohtre”, which means “muddy place”.) But I couldn’t linger too long to snap photos…I suddenly realized that my phone battery was getting perilously low, and I doubted I could navigate all these paths without a map. Especially since they started getting fainter and fainter as we crossed some farm fields. Even though we were in this gorgeous lush place, still had plenty of sunlight, and weren’t far from civilization…I nonetheless didn’t want to get lost, at least with Griffin in tow. I was down to about 1% charge when we ran across a cheerful girl walking her dog who confirmed that yes, we were on the right path and not far from Lower Swell. Whew! No need to send out the search parties tonight.

Two and a half days in the picture-perfect Cotswolds was not nearly enough; you could easily spend a couple of weeks here, hopscotching around these wonderful little towns and villages, staying a night or two in each. That is, if you’re into this sort of thing…city lovers might be bored to tears by such a quiet, bucolic place. Perhaps I would too after a couple weeks. But I grew up in the country and enjoy being serenaded to sleep by crickets, so the Cotswolds were a true delight for me, a real balm for the soul—at least for a few days. I’ve been tempted to discount England as being perhaps too easy and not exotic enough for us Americans, but this was another reminder just how wonderful it really can be.

Next stop: Gloucester!