If you ever wanted to feel like your home simply isn’t good enough, then why not take
a trip to The Cotswolds?!
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Hundreds of cute English villages spread over 800 beautiful square miles, make for an easy
and peaceful road trip experience. In this video, join us as we discover where to enjoy
the perfect cream tea, the best villages to explore and how to easily find a hiking trail
that fits your own personal stamina. If you’re new here, then welcome. We make travel movies
from around the world, hoping you might just find your next holiday inspiration. This is
Suitcase Monkey basically just looking at other peoples homes, in The Cotswolds.
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Our first few stops were rather spontaneous but allowed us to stretch our legs on the
way to our accommodation. It was here that we started to fall in love with the officially
titled Cotswolds Stone that helps gives the region its distinct look and feel.
Over the coming days, we must have eyed up hundreds of cute English homes, trying to
pick our favourite. Although considering the high presentation of every house, we wondered
if maybe you are banished if you can’t follow the 3 simple rules of apparently living here:
One, you MUST be an expert gardener, two, you have to have an excellent sense of symmetry,
and three, you’re creative enough to give your home a name that befits its beauty. Little
Acorns. Lavender Cottage. This probably means we couldn’t live here, since we called our
home, “12”.
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Just a few minutes drive from Naunton village was our accommodation, where we’d be staying
4 wonderful nights. Something that wasn’t quite as wonderful however, was my parking.
(PHONE RINGS)
- "Yeah we've got a reservation" - "I'll just open the gates"
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"10 points!"
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After our lovely hosts greeted us with some hot scones, fresh from the oven, we settled into our room
and took things easy. Tomorrow would turn out to be the busiest day of our trip, as
we explored all of the must visit areas in The Cotswolds.
We started our first full day early with an 8am breakfast. And I think now is the best
time to tell you how to have the perfect Full English Breakfast. The key ingredient is Black
Pudding. Ask any British person if they like Black Pudding and you will get a strong answer,
one way or the other. But in my mind, if you haven’t had Black Pudding with your Full
English breakfast, then you haven’t had a Full English Breakfast. But it is probably
best to ignore the fact that 2 of its main ingredients are pigs blood and fat. So do
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Long time viewers will know that I’ve never used a drone before in my videos. But that
will now change so enjoy my first attempts at some airborne videography.
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Ok, so this is totally just me moving my phone around. Did anyone actually fall for that?
I do apologise. This is the very cute Model Village which is a tiny Bourton on the Water
replica. There’s even a model village within the model village and within that model village
is another model village. It is even built
using the same Cotswold stone as its inspiration. Chiaki actually came here as a child so we
recreated that special moment, and with some success.
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Something that we kept stumbling upon were the traditional red telephone boxes that had
been converted to Defibrillators. I later learnt that this particular one in Lower Slaughter
was actually the first in the country to be used for this purpose, turning an unused kiosk
into something potentially life saving.
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Wandering around Upper Slaughter, we stumbled on this hotel and nearing lunchtime, we took
the opportunity to order a cream tea with this picturesque view. I’m still not sure
whether my jam is supposed to go on top of the cream or if its the other way round so
I always like to hedge my bets.
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This is Arlington Row in Bibury, the most photographed street in The Cotswolds. Originally
built in the 14th century as a store selling wool, it was converted to cottages 300 years
later. If it seems familiar to some of you, it’s because it’s on the very first page
of your British passport. People do live here remember, so its a bit odd with everyone taking
photos but you can actually book a stay in number 9. Nosey-ing around on their website,
gives you the chance to see the inside of these lovely cottages. Just be aware that
there will be zero welcoming of dogs.
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Another quick run in the car took us to Cirencester, often referred to as the capital of The Cotswolds.
This would be the only city we would be visiting, so found ourselves mostly browsing all the
shops. Following a quick browse of how much it would be to move here, we made our way
home for some rest and relaxation as tomorrow we’d be embarking on our first Cotswolds hike
After the fun of sitting in every available chair in our room, we had another filled day
ahead of us.
Perched upon a hill, amidst 50 acres of parkland, lies Broadway Tower.
This striking castle design was built 2 centuries ago and is the second highest point in The
Cotswolds, giving you the chance to see 16 different counties once you’ve climbed to
the top.
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Next we made our way to Broadway. This was one of my favourite villages we visited. It
was a lot wider and more spread out so didn’t feel as cramped as others. It was mainly one
main road, with a good selection of quaint little shops including this Cotswolds Chocolate
shop. Along with cheese and ice cream, chocolate is a popular local dish and there’s a number
of stops around The Cotswolds that specialise in each.
We then drove to the tiny town of Blockley, which is so small that it needs a sign post
directing you to the only toilets in the village. And although useful, we’d actually come
here for very a different reason. There are hundreds of official hiking trails in The
Cotswolds and it can be quite daunting to know where to start. Googling around, I found
an app called All Trails which was really useful to help narrow the search down. You
can filter by length, ease, and whether it loops back to the start which we needed for
the car. After filtering in our preferences it was the 9km Blockley and Batsford Circular
that suited us best.
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Long before tourism, wool was the primary trade for the region, but these furry animals
are also believed to have been how The Cotswolds got its name. The word “wold” is an old
English term for hill and “cots” refers to the sheep enclosures scattered throughout.
So Cots Wold literally translates to sheep enclosures on the hill.
Needing some more garden inspiration we made a brief stop at Kiftsgate Court Gardens. A
super impressive display split over multiple levels, it was enough to get us thinking about
our own poor excuse of a garden back home. A seed was indeed planted.
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Castle Combe’s beauty was the straw that broke the camels back. No longer would we
live in a house called 12. No longer would we accept a fence that was blown down back
in February that we just couldn’t be arsed to fix. The expert gardening skills of these
fine Cotswolds folk, had lit a fire within us. And without any shame that we were now
clearly in our 30s, we fired up the Sat Nav and arrived at Nailsworth Garden Centre.
And it was here, that I realised the locals secret. It wasn’t that they had amazing
gardening skills. It was that they had amazing garden centres. Maybe we should add a bird
bath. A statue that means business. A bloody horse. A zen bridge. There’s no zen with
a zen bridge. A lady about to eat an apple. Woah. Hang on…
This was clearly destiny.
At the time of editing it is day 1 of our London garden transformation. Which means
in just a few short weeks, we will have our very own piece of The Cotswolds.
amount of time you’ll stay here. So if you only have 1 or 2 days The Cotswolds, these
are the places I would put to the top of the list: If you have 1 day I think Bourton on
the Water, Bibury, and Lower and Upper Slaughter are perfect since they are all in close proximity.
Broadway and Castle Combe were both great but are very north and very south so it really
depends on what else you’re doing or where else you want to go that’s near.
From a managing expectations point of view, lots of these places are simply villages and
not much else is going on beyond that. Castle Combe for example was lovely but was basically
just a stretch of houses and could be done in 30 minutes. So bear that in mind if you
plan on driving an hour just to get to one destination.
For places such as Bourton, and the Slaughters, get there as early as possible. We arrived
at 9am and found a parking spot fairly easily but it was full an hour later. For Lower Slaughter
I don’t think there’s any real car park to speak of, so we just found some country
road and walked back. Parking is probably the only difficult thing about the whole trip.
We found that entering the term “free parking” when searching on Google Maps did just that,
so try that term instead of just “parking”. When planning your route, I basically just
looked at loads of blogs and vlogs (such as this one) and added places of interest to
my map. That was ultimately why we booked the B&B that we did, because it was literally
right in the middle of everywhere we wanted to go.
The room was £136 per night with breakfast included and for us was perfect to be in the
middle of nowhere, where it was silent and peaceful. I’ve stayed within Bourton on
the Water before which has the benefit of it feeling like your own village where you
can take a walk for dinner or breakfast. But it wasn’t as much of the country escape
as we had this time round. One thing I didn’t cover in the main video,
mostly for the modern day trend of eating your food in the dark, is Gastro Pubs. They
are everywhere in the Cotswolds and often, the only type of restaurant around. Visit
them. Visit often. They are awesome. I’m not sure if this was a one off for us,
but if you’re travelling during peak season, I’d advise to make reservations at restaurants
before you travel there, especially if you need to take a drive just to get there. When
we called ahead to places in Cirencester, for example, it took 4 phone calls until we
found somewhere with space. Making a reservation a few hours before should be enough but just
something to keep in mind. As I quickly mentioned during the video, all
cafes and shops seemed to close at 5pm, with the exception of restaurants and pubs. I’m
not sure if thats a country thing or a pandemic thing but yeah, Chipping Campden seemed like
a lovely town, but with everything shut, the visit lost some of it charm and energy.
For transport, we took a 55 minute direct train from Marylebone to Banbury station,
which is the quickest way to be at the edge of the Cotswolds, at least from London. There
is an Enterprise Car rental just outside the station and we then drove from there. I’m
still not sure if that’s a normal way to do it, rather than just rent a car from London.
But since we live on the East side, it means you have to drive through the city or around
the M25 both of which can be a bit of a nightmare. This basically meant we only had to drive
around the quieter country roads which suited us best. The car was £150 for 4 days and
£35 for petrol. The return train was £33 per person but remember to always book in
advance for trains in the UK. 12 weeks is usually the sweet spot. But maybe do a cost
comparison from wherever you’re coming from, and see what’s best.
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thanks for watching Suitcase Monkey.