
On Tuesday morning (April 6th) we boarded a Mad Max Tours tour bus in Bath and headed north for a day-long "Cotswold Discovery Tour." The Cotswolds are a 25-by-90 mile chunk of Gloucestershire that has been designated an "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" by the people in England who get to decide such things. (It seems like that would be a pretty fun job.)
Although Bob and I are not currently interested in complete packaged vacations (although this may become attractive in our golden years when he can no longer drive and I can no longer read a map or provide helpful driving tips such as "Oops, we were supposed to exit back there"), we have had very good experiences taking half-day and daylong tours with reputable tour companies (we tend to follow Rick Steves' recommendations, and he has yet to lead us wrong), and so we try to work them into the itinerary when possible. We end up seeing and learning things we'd never see or learn if left to our own devices.
Each Mad Max driver is able to tailor the tours to his own liking, and we had a fantastic guide (Charles, who was knowledgeable, funny -- but always appropriate -- and thoroughly enjoyable) who had worked out a route that left Bath at 8:30 a.m. and took us through Castle Combe, Badminton, Malmesbury, Cirencester, Bibury, North Leach, Burton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, Upper and Lower Slaughter, Tetbury, and got us back to Bath around 4:30 p.m. or thereabouts.

The first stop on our Cotswold Discovery Tour was a village named Castle Combe. It is in Wiltshire and, depending on whom you talk to, is too far south to actually be in the Cotswolds. (I'll explain that in a bit.)
It has been voted "The Prettiest Village in England" several times by whomever gets to decide that. (Maybe the same people choosing the "Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty". Would that not be an awesomely fun job? Although I guess you'd make all the people in the left-out Areas of Outstanding Natural Ugliness and Non-Prettiest Villages in England angry at you.)

Whether or not Castle Combe is actually in the Cotswolds, it has all the characteristics of a typical Cotswold market town. Narrow streets (easy for herding sheep) lead into a central market square. Wool was a big industry in medieval England, and the best sheep came from the Cotswolds. Money from the wealthy wool merchants helped build some of the most beautiful little churches (called "wool churches") and villages in England.
When cotton became popular and the Industrial Revolution happened (watch North and South), the coal to run the machines was up north in Lancashire and thereabouts, so industry moved north and the wool industry collapsed. That was bad news for the Cotswolds at the time, but good news for tourists nowadays -- the area was preserved in a time warp, and the villages for the most part remain pristine.

That's Castle Combe's Market Cross, where trade happened. The cross on top was to remind tradesmen that God was watching them while they traded, and that they should follow ethical business practices, and not do things like use false weights and measures.

If you're going to have a proper village, you have to have an Inn.

You also have to have a church.


While Bob and Claire investigated the inside of the church, I hung out in the churchyard.

I always get excited finding pretty architectural details.
So while we're sitting on the bus driving to the next town :) let me give you some general info about the Cotswolds. You should skip it if you don't like general information.
The northern and western edge of the Cotswolds is very clearly dilineated by a steep limestone escarpment (the "wolds" are a range of hills comprised of open country on this limestone base), but the eastern and southern boundaries are a bit more . . . "fluid."
The eastern boundary is typically considered to be the city of Oxford, but the southern boundary is hotly debated, because every little village north of Bath wants to be considered "a Cotswold village" -- it's great for tourism. :)
People in Gloucestershire will assure you that if you're driving north from Bath, you don't really enter the Cotswolds until you enter Gloucestershire. Other folks will say Malmesbury (a village in Wiltshire just south of Gloucestershire) is probably the Cotswolds' southernmost village. The tourist industry in the south insists that the Cotswolds extend all the way south to Bath.
I could not help but notice that almost everything in England is hotly debated. (If you want to have some fun, ask anyone native to the Cotswolds "Hey, do you think fox hunting should have been banned?" and then find yourself a comfortable seat and a drink.)
We drove through Badminton (home of the famous Badminton Horse Trials and the Duke of Beaufort, whom we saw out walking with his wife), Malmesbury (home of the Dyson vacuum cleaner), and Cirencester (home of Elizabeth Hurley and her organic farm) on our way to our next stop, the town of Bibury.
You will be pleased to hear that Bibury is solidly in Gloucestershire and solidly within "the Cotswolds". :)

Arlington Row, in Bibury, is probably the most famous (and photographed) row of cottages in England. Rumor has it that Henry Ford tried to buy the whole row of cottages to ship back to Michigan (but Bibury wouldn't let him, thank goodness), and William Morris called Bibury "the most beautiful village in England". (This term seems to be thrown about willy-nilly in the Cotswolds. They're all really beautiful.)
The cottages were built in 1380 as a monastic wool store, and were converted into homes for weavers in the seventeenth century. We were told that they're now maintained by the National Trust and are low-income housing.



This paint color on the Arlington Row cottages is "National Trust Green," our tourguide Charles told us. :)


Keeping in mind that the Cotswolds are sitting on top of a big old hunk of limestone, it's no surprise that thatched roofs in the Cotswolds are not the norm, although we did see a few. The norm are these handmade stone slate roofs, made from . . . limestone. :)
The stone was mined from deep in the escarpment and then set out to freeze. When it froze, it split along the natural "grain" of the stone, which helped the roofers in the process of making the shingles. Freezing also helped make the slates watertight. The huge eaves on the houses are because there weren't any rain gutters, so the eaves had to be long enough to throw the water clear of the homes.
I guess when you start expecting your blog readers to be interested in roofing tiles, it is time to change the subject. :)

Let's discuss walls, shall we? You cannot go more than a mile or two anywhere in the Cotswolds without seeing a drystack stone wall. These are walls made without mortar, although you'll see some mortar here and there where a wall has tumbled down or a car has run into one or something and they've had to fix it. The vertical coping stones on top were to keep the sheep from jumping over the walls.





So that's sweet Bibury. Then we got back on the bus and went through Northleach (the Wyvern Mystery was partly filmed here) and Bourton-on-the-Water ("the Venice of the Cotswolds", and reputedly lovely but terribly overrun with traffic and tourists, so Charles doesn't stop there because it's so crowded) on our way to Stow-on-the-Wold for lunch.



I'm telling you, EVERYTHING is hotly debated. :)



Several times on our trip when we visited these very old buildings, the restrooms were accessible by going back into a courtyard, and there were often the sweetest, sweetest hidden little gardens back there. So always check out the bathrooms. :)

I need to tell you that I could very easily and happily spend most of my life traipsing around outside old churches. The insides I could usually skip, but the churchyards are always so interesting.
If I must ever remarry, I will put "Do you like to walk around old churchyards?" on my quality control questionnaire.
(I'm going to start saying wild stuff to reward anyone who is actually reading this entire post. Ha.)



Almost every little churchyard I visited had extra gravestones propped here and there. I wondered what the story was. Did they fall over in a flood? Gloucestershire had terrible floods in 2007 -- the worst on record -- and they continue to work hard to combat summer flooding.

Some of the still-standing stones are very tilty.

And this one looks pretty solid.
Well, I think I'll save the return trip home (Stow-on-the-Wold was our northernmost stop before we turned south to head back to Bath) for another post, because I have pushed my luck today by making you look at roofs, walls, and gravestones. :)
Up next . . . Upper and Lower Slaughter and Tetbury. Whoo hoo! Stay tuned!
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