The Cotswolds

Most of what people come to the Cotswolds to look at was paid for in wool. The medieval trade put up the merchants' houses and the churches still called wool churches, all in Jurassic limestone, which weathers from honey to grey and leaves house and field wall the one colour. The land climbs out of the upper Thames meadows into the wolds the region is named for, then drops away at a steep escarpment over the Severn Vale. In 2023 its 790 square miles stopped being an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and became a National Landscape: a new name for the same view.

People come for the villages more than for any one sight, so where to sleep is the decision that matters. The ones most people picture, Bourton-on-the-Water and the Slaughters, are in the middle, along with the crowds that come of being pictured, and they are better walked through than stayed in. Kingham, in the east, is the corner for food, round Daylesford's farm, with its own station on the direct line to Paddington. Cheltenham, in the west, gives up some of the postcard for more restaurants and shops. The south, towards Bath, is quieter and more spread out than the north.

Come in May and June, or September and October, when it is mild and the crowds are thinner. In high summer the roads fill, the restaurants book out, and the villages that draw a crowd anyway feel it hardest. December and January are quiet for a reason: they are the coldest and wettest months, and the gardens that are much of the point close or cut back. Kiftsgate Court simply shuts, October to March.

Walk the 5.4-mile circuit from Bourton-on-the-Water through Upper and Lower Slaughter, and Bourton's model village is there at the end for anyone who found the full-size ones too busy. Daylesford's organic farm shop stands on the Bamford family's 2,500-acre farm near Kingham, and The Wild Rabbit cooks with what that farm grows. The Cotswold Way runs 102 miles from Chipping Campden to Bath; May and September are the months to walk it, or whichever stretch of it fits.

Bibury has drawn up to 20,000 visitors on a single busy weekend. Castle Combe, at the southern end, keeps coaches out of its centre altogether.