Last month I visited the South West of England on holiday. I've not had a chance to post photos, and for those of you who like quintessentially English villages - here's a snapshot of a tour of the Cotswolds (click on the images to see larger versions)! I'd met up with my older sister and one of my nephews in the wonderful city of Bath and I'll share some photos of that another time. But one day we took a tour run by
Lion Tours in a mini-bus around some of the lovely villages.
First stop
Castle Combe....
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| A dog enjoying a river run! |
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| Some old slates for a renovation project |
Our guide knew the "lady of the house" so we were shown round her lovely garden. You can see the roof in the distance which was being repaired.
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| I LOVE this porch decoration |
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| The main street in Castle Combe |
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| You would have to duck going through this door! |
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| I love the rooftops.... |
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| An old sign below this window |
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| And the old Market Cross |
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| I love the curve of this building |
It was then onto
Malmesbury Abbey with the old sandstone carvings over the doorway
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| A stained glass window designed by William Morris |
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The Abbey with ruins showing it was much larger once.
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Then onto
Bibury for lunch (and Cake!) and a wander around the village and more "chocolate box" houses (so called as you used to get biscuit tins and chocolate boxes with pictures of thatched cottages and pretty old houses on the lid!)
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| Arlington Row, Bibury |
These cottages appear on many calendars of the Cotswolds! And there is a connection between Arlington Row and "Arlington" in the USA -
see here for link
And another quintessential English Cottage with roses!
And finally we called in at
Tetbury with it's 17th Century Market Hall
And some rather fine Georgian houses...
So I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Cotswolds too. Um..... is now a good time to say I'm off on my travels again shortly!
Great post, Sian ! I loved your report so much - I'm keeping it as my guide when I travel to the Cotswolds - soon, I expect. I've been adjourning it for too long.
ReplyDeleteThank you, good luck for your future journeys.
Mario
Hi Mario, glad you enjoyed the tour. I'm sure you will love the Cotswolds! Enjoy :-)
DeleteI really like the look of the English cottages. Thanks so much for the tour. I can almost picture myself walking along the streets.
ReplyDeleteOh yes they are so pretty. Quintessentially English cottages with roses round the door. Just like in the movies :-) In fact these villages are often in the movies!
DeleteThe Cotswolds are so pretty. You got some lovely shots of them.
ReplyDeleteThanks, and thanks for leaving a comment. Have taken a look at your blog and added it to my blogroll :-)
DeleteOoops that sounds abrupt! I really enjoyed browsing through and wanted to bookmark it so I can go back and take a longer look during the looooong winter nights :-)
DeleteThe Cotswolds are almost ridiculously picturesque and your super photos capture that so well, Sian. I don't know that part of the Cotswolds, as my MiL lives near Stow-on-the-Wold.
ReplyDeleteI'd been trhough the Cotswolds a few times on the way to Badmintong Horse Trials, but this was the first time I'd had a chance to explore more. Loved the place. Though I would probably get fed up of the tourists ;-)
DeleteI found your blog by accident one night when I was clicking on "Next Blog". In this modern day world it is fascinating to see your beautiful pictures of such a quiet, out of the way place on this earth. I am an 80 year old retired school librarian and my husband of 62 years is retired from the Federal government. He was an agricultural loan officer to help people stay on farms and have homes in rural areas. We live in the western part of the huge state of Texas. We have had drought for about five years and are very behind on average rainfall for this year. It is a struggle to keep my grass alive and 3 or more of our big landscape trees have died and lots of fruit trees are gone. We used to have Aracauna chickens (they lay colored eggs) but they have all passed on now and we got out of the chicken business. We would love to have more if they could roam free range like yours do. But when ours are loose they disappear as coyotes and wild hogs are plentiful and enjoy eating them and also our barn cats disappear in the same manner. We have to keep chickens in pens with even the top wired over them too. So they don't get much room to roam. We live in the edge of the country of a small town of 10,000 people. We have a big pasture with cactus and mesquite trees for cows to roam and then we have another acreage where our crop is cotton. From a big garden we have been enjoying watermelons and cantaloupes and tomatoes. I made 5 quarts of salsa last week. My husband loves to grow Irises and Daylilies and even won a first place bowl at the National Iris Convention in April in Dallas, Texas and received national recognition in the Iris journal . He has me show him your chicken pictures as he loves them and can name what kind they are. I did not intend to write a letter here, but would love to correspond occasionally if your would care to. My address is alpyburn@sbcglobal.net Bye for now, Lou Ann Pyburn
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting and for telling me about your life too. How fascinating. And YOUR crops sound so exotic! Would be happy to correspond :-)
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