Mills, tearooms, countryside & miniature villages
Trip Start
Jul 14, 2009
1
27
94
Trip End
Feb 18, 2010
Where I stayed
Cotswolds, England, United Kingdom
Thursday, September 24, 2009
So the last time we wrote we'd picked up Chezza and we were in recovery mode!
So what have we done since then?
Well, Chezza was feeling a lot more alive than what we though she was going to be (jet lag wise) so on Monday Noma and Chezza had a walk into town after I had gone to pick up the hire car. I had already planned to get my fix of golf! So off they went to wander around the shops for a few hours and off I went to the local Golf Course.
I know you all don't really want to hear a blow by blow account of my game of golf so I won't go into it! However, I did play quite well on a very good course. (7 over to be exact!) When I returned you'll never guess what I found.... Yep.... two lazy bums asleep on the couch!
So pretty much the rest of the day was just hanging out eating some dinner Mat and I prepared and drinking more red wine. (oh of course we did a bit of planning for the next couple of days in the cotswolds!)
Woke up pretty early on the Tuesday and packed the car up to travel up to the "wolds" (Cirencester to be exact). It only takes around 1 and a bit hours by car so decided that on the way we'd check out some of the local villages. Bibury was the first stop. I remembered this place from a couple of years ago as it's around where Mat and Jo got married. Beautiful little village with a trout farm / river / amazing little cottages and some pretty good short walks. We managed to catch a water mole doing it's daily business on the banks of the river. It was then onto Stow-on-the-Wold for an afternoon ice cream! Toffee for me and Noma and Double chocolate for Chezza! On the way back to Cirencester we decided to try and find the Roman Villa. Basically an old "unearthed" Roman settlement. Had a bit of luck as we turned up at 4.50pm and it closed at 5pm so I managed to sweet talk the lady behind the counter for a free wander around for 15 minutes. It was £6 each to get in!! Bargain.
We then headed back to Cirencester for a late Pub Lunch and a wander around the old capital of the "wolds". Nice little town but not an awful lot to do apart from see the church (which was getting renovated) and take a look at the old buildings around).
So we woke up after staying at the Travelodge just outside of the town and headed over to Burton-on-the-water (known as the Venice of the Cotswalds). Burton-on-the-water is very picturesque and has an excellent motor museum and one of the best shoe shops! Chezza almost found some boots that fitted correctly.... So close but oh so far! exciting! In Burton there was also a perfumery which didn't exactly smell that nice!
We borrowed Mats GPS navigation thingy for the car so I programme in our next destination. It's off to the miniture village! after 20 minutes of driving, Ken, the aussie voice Mat has programme as being the person telling you where to go, told us we had reached our destination. Nice village but no miniture village! to my dismay I discovered I had pressed a 2 instead of a 1 into the post code finder! So re-programme it for the correct post code only to discover that the miniture village was back in Burton! so 20 mins back! dam! nice drive though! oh yeh the miniture village was very well done and worth the drive!
Found a couple of lovely villages on the way back to the "Lodge". Lower and Upper Slaughter! Not sure why they call them that but Lower Slaughter has won the best kept village awards for numerous years in a row. There was even a Mill museum there but it was a little disappointing!
Ok so that "The Wolds" in a nut shell, some amazing villages and countryside!
