England Day 9 - Tour of the Cotswolds
Woke early today for our Cotswolds trip with Mad Max. Breakfast (included with the room) was fabulous. There’s a buffet with some hand fruit, yoghurt, cereal, coffee, and tea, and your choice of hot items from the kitchen made to order (oatmeal, omelettes, pancakes (!!), toast). We were again blasted by a wave of cigarette smoke early in the morning, and this haunted us for the rest of our trip; every morning, noon, and night our room would reek of it. I’m not sure if it’s the staff taking a smoke break outside or fellow patrons not following the rules and leaning out their windows (the butts outside our own are a fairly good example that not all follow the rules), but it’s aggravating to say the least, and gives me a headache/nausea every time.
We met our Mad Max tourbus outside the Glass House (basically just across the way from Garfunkels), and our driver/tourguide David was extremely pleased that our entire group arrived on time. No latecomers, us! He gave us a quick rundown of the towns we’d be seeing, and then we were on our way. A note: if you’re taking this tour, do yourself a favor and sit on the left side. Everything worthwhile to see, it seemed, was on the left. In addition I managed to pick the one seat on the bus (right, middle) that was in sun the entire journey. I baked!
We hit traffic fairly early into the journey, but David was resourceful and went off at the first junction to try to avoid it (we were all, I think, content to sit for a while in the shade of the trees and watch the sheep!). No luck at finding a different route…we hit another long queue line of cars, this time for a junction that was five miles down the road! So David turned around to try another route…
Our catchphrase by the end of this day was “poor David”. Every time it seemed we tried to get somewhere, a road was closed down! David ended up reworking our itinerary to do some things in reverse order, to better coincide with the direction we were now heading in.
We passed through the peaceful town of Badminton to see our one and only thatched roof in all of our journey. I know that thatched roofs are a real liability for fires, and expensive in needing to be redone, but it seems such a shame that there aren’t more of them.
We passed through the town of Pennsylvania, and learned that one of our group members used to live in our own town back home! Had a great time chatting with her about how things had changed. It truly is a small world.
We drove through Sherstone, containing the pub where Prince Harry was caught drinking underage. We stopped in Tetbury for a morning cup and some very light shopping, where I convinced mom to buy a pink poodle for the upstairs bathroom *WEG*. It will be a conversation piece, demmit! The pink poodle, come all the way from the Cotswolds to grace our bathroom. Sorry; toilet, loo, WC. We each grabbed a fantastic cookie from the bakery next door - which I’m sure was 99% pure butter - before reboarding the bus.
Our next drive through was Cirencester, where we unfortunately could not drive past the church due to - once again - another road closure. We hit another one while trying to get to Bibury. Poor David!
We drove through Lower Slaughter (named that because “slaughter” is an old Saxon word for “a muddy place”, and the Slaughters are along the Eyford River: one that eventually flows into the Thames). We stopped in Upper Slaughter to get out and do a walkthrough for about a half hour, with David to point things out. Unlike all of our other walkthroughs this was perfectly timed, with just the right amount of information. We walked into a beautiful old church with “13th century air conditioning,” as David referred to it. Sat in the cool admiring the stained glass. We also walked past a beautiful manor-turned-hotel, where I spied an orange feline under one of the chairs, enjoying the shade.
Our next stop was Stow on the Wold for lunch. We wandered about for quite a while before finally deciding on the restaurant of the Ye Olde Stocks Hotel (there are a set of stocks in the city center, which the restaurant faces). I personally wanted to go to the restaurant across the street, as it seemed much prettier, with a lovely manicured lawn. Alas, I couldn’t convince anyone else to! Our lunch was superb though, if the location was a little faded. With about half an hour left afterwards (we’d had about an hour and a half total) we wandered about looking into the shops.
At 2pm we were off to Bibury via a different route this time, hitting Bourton on the Water on the way. Bourton on the Water is one of the more touristy towns in the Cotswolds, and was certainly crowded today, with a fair going on by the banks of the river. It was pretty though, and looked like a great shopping mecca. David was not necessarily supposed to take us through the town (I suppose they have to have permits to do so, so BotW is not on the usual schedule), but I think he felt the need to treat us for all of the delays.
Our last stop was Bibury, a gorgeous little town where I was easily distracted by the ducklings in the river that ran by. Ducks! We walked in the cool shade of the trees, then visited the old mill briefly (for ice cream) before heading back out to enjoy the river. Though the walls are elevated around it, there are little bits that have steps down to the water, and so Alana and I sat down and let the cool, clear water flow through our fingers. Alana was gifted with a quilted coin purse from a Japanese couple because she said “arigatou” when offered a Japanese candy. She was more than a little delighted…I think it made the day for her!
The air smells clean and beautiful, in spite of the sheep, cows, and horses that abound in the countryside. It passes through the top, elevated ‘skylight’ in the roof of the van (the cause of my sun later in the day), cooling us as we drive. The sky was a cloudless blue this morning, but now has given way to a few puffy clouds. We were dropped off back at Bath at a little before 5pm.
This was one of my favorite tours of the trip; the weather was lovely (if somewhat hot), and David prevailed through adversity admirably. I’m sure that as soon as he was alone he let loose some well-chosen words, went directly to the pubs that night, and drowned his troubles!
It was a very warm walk back to the hotel. We tried see if we could get a hot air balloon ride for tomorrow in the Cotswolds themselves, but unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. If we thought the outside was warm, we were in for a surprise when we entered our rooms. *Hot* with trapped air, and the only thing the windows had done by being open all day was to let the ever-present cigarette odor seep into everything. Ugh. We freshened up and then went down and out to have dinner at Sakura.
Sakura was an…interesting dinner. If you’re familiar with Japanese fare then the dinner was lovely; for us it was a bit uncomfortable. We chose the sukiyaki, which involved dipping the cooked beef in beaten raw egg. It was supposed to heighten the flavor, but I fear my tongue was unable to discern the difference. The restaurant itself was a rather small establishment, and we learned that everybody else comes later. For the entire hour we had the whole restaurant to ourselves. Which made the fact that we were told to make a reservation and that there was a cancellation policy a tad ridiculous.
We whiled away the rest of the night talking back in our room, using wet washcloths on our necks to try and cool ourselves down. Unfortunately the breeze that had visited us yesterday was nowhere to be seen; we learned that it had reached a high of 90F/30C.