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Published: April 26th 2012
It's us again!
Sitting on the iconic bridge in the town of Bourton-on-the-Water.This weekend, we rented a car with two of Mike's classmates from Singapore (Fuad and Aloysius - the same two we met at the Giant's Causeway), and headed out on the wrong side of the road (well, technically, it was the left side) to a region of England just 1.5 hours outside of London called the Cotswolds. The region is a range of limestone hills, which are dotted with picturesque villages that are made of limestone buildings. It's also a great region to do some hiking, which is what we planned on doing. We set off on Saturday morning to pick up the car at Heathrow airport. We had only gotten our acts together on Friday night to rent the car (didn't get around to booking a hotel though), so we arrived at the airport at 10 am ready to pick up the car, only to find that the reservation hadn't been confirmed because there were no cars left and it was too late of notice. So we went to the other rental desks and were stunned to hear quotes of double to triple of what we had originally booked. We didn't know what to do. Luckily it took some googling,
but we realized that booking online was much cheaper than showing up (weird!) but we had to wait two hours to pick up the car, so that's what we did. So we had a long lunch and finally we were ready to go at 12:45.
We were fortunate to be traveling with the Singapore boys, because they also drive on the left side of the street (we didn't trust ourselves to drive on the wrong side). It was a fairly scary experience for us at times, because once in awhile we watched the driver and thought we were turning into the wrong lane!! We've been here long enough now to have gotten used to being on the opposite side of the street, but when you're not fully paying attention, you default to what you know best (this is why we often find ourselves looking the wrong way when crossing the street in a zombie like state). We were thankful for the GPS in the car because it made navigating the Cotswolds much easier, especially when we didn't really know where we wanted to go.
Our first stop was in a very touristy town called Bourton-on-the-Water. It certainly was
We stopped for some Cotswolds-famous ice cream!
These are our friends from Singapore! Fuad is on the left and Aloysius is to his right. a very picturesque town, with limestone buildings and a little stream running through the high street (main street). We bought some ice cream and explored. We found a trail that led to the next town over, called Upper Slaughter, a few miles away through some fields, so we went on a bit of a walk. Upper Slaughter was also a picturesque, but less touristy village. After exporing the two towns, we headed back to the car and thought we'd catch the sunset at one of the highest points in the Cotswolds (which is not actually very high), in the town called Stow-on-the-Wold.
Unfortunately, the sunset wasn't all that nice, but the town was really cute albeit almost completely empty. We thought we would stop here for the night, but we went from inn to inn and they were all booked up (they were super expensive anyways, this is a somewhat ritzy vacation region for stressed out Londoners). So we used our usual saver, booking.com (no plug intended) and found the closest place 10 miles away in a much larger town called Cheltenham. Before leaving, we were starving so we tried to find a place to eat, which was a
Hanging out in the town of Lower Slaughter
We walked along a path through farmers fields for about 20 minutes to get to this pretty town. difficult task. Other than a few expensive restaurants, we came across a decent Indian restaurant, but apparently the rest of the town had the idea to come here too, because there was a line. So we continued to look and were starting to lose when we came across a youth hostel (YHA). They apparently served food for cheap, so we tried it out (we were worried that maybe they actually would have space for the night after we had already booked, but it turned out they were also full). It seemed really weird to be eating in a hostel, especially since 1) we were not staying there and B) the dining room was overrun by families with litte children who themselves were running around. Not the youth hostel eating experience we would have expected. The food was okay, the cook offered to make us almost anything, only to discover that she was missing all the ingredients.
We then drove towards our hotel, and it was very unfortunate that it was pitch black out, because the road we took seemed very scenic, with a canopy of tree branches making it feel like we were driving through a cave. It was
too dark to see, so perhaps there were garbage dumps lining the side of the "picturesque" road, who knows (but unlikely!). We stopped for a few moments when we reached a clearing because our Singaporean friends wanted to see the stars, I guess they don't see them very much through the bright lights of Singapore.
Getting to our hotel presented us with more problems. Mike had booked us into two studios in a privately owned building in Cheltenham. Needless to say, checking in was a bit difficult, especially since when we called the agent, they had only booked one room and the rest were full. After some negotiation, and waiting like creepers in front of the building, they had found us a better place, another property of theirs a few blocks down. They gave us a two bedroom really nice flat for the same price of what we were going to pay, so we had lucked out. It was a nice place to spend the night!
In the morning, we were on the move again. Because Cheltenham was not such an attractive looking town, we made an immediate beeline for breakfast in another very quaint town called Winchcombe.
The picturesque town of Stow-on-the-Wold
This is a sample of the cute streets that we found in Stow. This town is situated on the coveted Cotswold Way, which is a major hiking route through the region. There were lots of locals who were setting out on their trek from here. We got out of the car and walked around a bit, stopping to watch some sheep in the field, try to find a countryside castle and then we grabbed a bit of breakfast from a cafe and taunted the sheep as we ate in front of them. We did actually find the castle (Sudeley Castle), but it was closed for the winter.
The next stop was a town called Broadway, also on the Cotswold Way. Elysia had downloaded a map of a hiking trail starting from here on the iPad so our intention was to hike for a few hours from here. The sun was high in the sky as we embarked on our hike. Elysia felt a bit silly carrying the iPad around to follow the route (21st century hiking). The trail started off through farmers fields, passing through kissing gates as we passed from one field to another. We just felt like we were tresspassing, walking through their plush green fields where sometimes animals were
grazing. The countryside was beautiful. At one point we started ascending up a wooded hill, which got us to the top of the second highest peak in the Cotswolds (again, not very high). The views of the countryside were beautiful! We also found the Broadway Tower up here, an old signal tower. From here, we met the Cotswold Way and travelled along it back down the hillside through fields of sheep and various obstacles back into town. The whole trek took us about 2.5 hours or so. Back in town (around 3pm) we decided we had properly earned our first Sunday roast dinner (a British tradition), including roast beef, yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and vegetables, yum yum! Fuad and Aloysius decided that they would prefer the lamb dinner. Mike felt that this was particularly heartless since we had spent the day hanging out with all of the newborn lambs in the fields on our hike!
When we were finished, the sun was still shining so we decided to head out of the Cotswolds up North about a half hour to Stratford. Stratford is known for its most famous resident: William Shakespeare. It was the place he was born in
Ye olde towne square, Stow
Medieval square, now littered with cars. and the place he died in. Stratford was beautiful! I can honestly say that I wish we had spent an entire day there, and I don't know what it looked like in Shakespeare's day, but today's town is definitely creatively inspiring! The heart of the town contains a beautiful canal (the river is.... you guessed it! The River Avon) with parkland on both banks. People were spread out all over the banks just basking in the sun or on the water in row boats. Very pretty! We only had a few hours to explore before heading back to London, so we walked along the river bank first to the Holy Trinity Church, where "Bill" is said to be buried. Unfortunately, we were too late and his grave was inside the church which had just closed. Ohwell, we will have to go some other day. Then we strolled through the town, passed the site where he was said to have died (they're doing excavations there now) and into the main pedestrian street. We walked down it and we a beautiful very old looking house that we took a picture of (interesting architecture). Of course it only took us a few moments
to notice other tourists standing and staring at it, which is then when we realized that the house was the birthplace of Shakespeare. Unfortunately again it was already closed, but it would have been nice to have gone in to see, but seeing it from the outside was also quite cool. At this point it was getting late, and we still had a 2 hour drive to London ahead of us, so we headed home.
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