The Cotswolds

The Cotswolds are an area with pretty stone houses, rock walls, and lots of sheep. We have 3 nights here as a relaxing break from all the museums and running around that we've been doing up to this point.

 I booked what looked like a lovely room on the Internet, but when we arrived it was not as clean as I like and the pictures on the website must have been taken a while ago.  I looked around that room and immediately began searching the Internet for an alternative. It was late at this point so we decided to stay the night and leave the next day, which we did though we took a big hit to the budget.

The next day we moved to a much nicer hotel and it was definitely worth moving. The nice hotel is in a place called Lower Slaughter (slaughter is a modification of an old word meaning swampy), and it's much nicer than the name implies.  The tour buses don't come here since it's just a couple of hotels and some houses, no shops to speak of.  This means it's nice and quiet and you can stroll around the village just enjoying the scenery.

Bourton-on-the-Water is a very nice town nearby with a small river running through it and lots of little stone bridges crossing the river.  We had lunch here one day and I bought a Christmas ornament to take home. I always try to buy an ornament from each place we've traveled. Stow-on-the-Wold is another town nearby with lots of old stone buildings and we also visited Moreton-in-Marsh.

The next day we visited Sudeley Castle and its gardens which meant a very scenic backroads drive. The gardens and the ruins of the tithe barn were very picturesque. The family who owns the place is very proud to say that their estate is the only private estate to have a queen buried there.  Catherine Parr, the sixth and last wife of Henry VIII lived and died there and is buried in the small church on the estate.

We also went to see the Broadway Tower which stands on the second-highest point of land in the Cotswolds.  We climbed up to the top and enjoyed the views of all the surrounding countryside. The day had started out with rain but ended up being gloriously sunny.

I think Bourton-on-the-Water was my favorite town, it was very nice with the river running through it. Lower Slaughter was my favorite village because it was a picturesque area and there were sheep and horses and pheasants to see.  We even saw a fox! He ran right along the stone wall by our cottage one evening.

Bourton-on-the-Water