Planning a Visit to the English Cotswolds? Welcome to the updated second edition of the Visitor's Guide to the English Cotswolds. The book was updated on July 7, 2014. The book has been expanded and now includes more maps, photographs, destinations, sights, places to stay, best pubs and much more. So, if you're planning a visit to the Cotswolds, you'll find this guide to be a valuable resource.
You'll find all of the information you need to plan your trip, including more than 160 color photographs, and to make it a great success. The English Cotswolds are a chain of undulating, limestone foothills that encompass a quiet, idyllic world of sleepy little towns and villages nestled among the hills and dales. Rising to just over 1,000 feet at the highest point on Cleeve Hill, the Cotswolds are spread across a half-dozen West Midland counties, including Gloucestershire, Avon, Wiltshire, Hereford and Worcester and Oxfordshire. For more than 90 miles, from Meon Hill just six miles south of Stratford-Upon-Avon, they stretch westward across the heart of England all the way to the great Roman city Bath.
For more than a thousand years these pastoral, rolling hills have been home to more, to farmers and shepherds and... well, to me. Please allow me to introduce you to my Cotswolds. Yes, we'll visit all the well-known and not-to-be-missed spots along the way, but I'll take you to places off the beaten path, places that very few visitors to the Cotswolds ever get to visit. Chipping Campden, Broadway, Stanton, Stanway, Snowshill, Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, Naunton, Northleach, Chedworth, The Slaughters, Buckland, Winchcombe, Burford, Cirencester and Bath are just some of the towns we'll visit; off the beaten path we'll visit the Duntisbournes villages, the tiny hamlet of Ford, the village of Bibury, and many more.. There's an air of timelessness among these ancient hills, honey-colored towns, villages and cottages.
This, then, was my world, a world quite different to that you'll find described in the average guide book to the Cotswolds. I see the Cotswolds, even the well-known sites, through different eyes than do the tour guides that steer the visitors from one well-worn site to the next, never deviating from the pre-set tour of what they think you should see. But there's more, so much more.
The historic sites and attractions we'll visit along the way include: Bellas Knap (an ancient long barrow - burial mound), the Rollright Stones (a prehistoric stone circle you're not likely to find in any other guide book), the lavender farm at Snowshill, the visually stunning ruins of the Roman Villa at Chedworth, Sudeley Castle (home of Queen Catherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII), the ruins of Hailes Abbey, Broadway Tower, Wells Cathedral, the Great Tithe Barn at Littleton, the Fleece Inn at Bretforton (one of England's oldest pubs), the Roman Baths at Bath, Wickhamford where you can visit the tomb of one of George Washington's relatives, and many more too numerous to mention here. You'll find information about where to stay and where to eat: pubs, inns, hotels and bed & breakfast houses. All the information you need to successfully plan your visit to the Cotswolds.
