Classic Cotswolds (Tour B)

Enjoy the Cotswolds with this two-day/three-night tour winding through the pretty and scenic roads. This route includes small country towns, chocolate box villages and typically English countryside which covers the counties of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, northern Wiltshire, southern Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

“The most English and the least spoiled of all our countrysides” wrote JB Priestley in 1933.

The honey-yellow stone towns and villages of the Cotswolds have enchanted visitors for generations and it is a perfect touring area with quiet, meandering roads and quaint architecture. This region is an area of outstanding natural beauty and our suggested route will take you along the most scenic drives, and offers plenty to do and see.

The glorious towns and villages look as if they have strayed into the 21st century from another era. The sheep-shaped past here is appealingly evident in striking wool churches and manor houses built by wealthy textile merchants. Flourishes of later heritage include a fine legacy of the Arts and Crafts movement. The tour is based at one of the most fabulously comfortable and timelessly stylish hotels in the country.

Highlights of the Cotswolds

• Stay at one of the Cotswolds most luxurious and indulgent country house hotels
• Discover beautiful and traditional stone-built villages such as Lower Slaughter
• Explore wonderful towns, full of history, such as Burford, Stow-on-the-Wold, Broadway, Tetbury & Winchcombe
• Visit the amazing Snowshill Manor, now in the care of the National Trust
• Be enchanted by the magnificent Hidcote Manor and Gardens
• See the famous Arlington Row in the very pretty village of Bibury
• Stop awhile at Barnsley House for coffee and to see the gardens
• Enjoy a stroll around the superb Rococo gardens at Painswick
• Spend quiet moments at the ruins of Hailes Abbey
• See how the Romans lived at Chedworth Roman Villa
• Sample gastronomic delights in a variety of pubs and restaurants

Itinerary

May be subject to change.

Day 1:

Bedroom at Thyme

Arrive in Southrop any time after 3pm and check in to your room. For those arriving early, indulge in afternoon tea, enjoy a stroll through the village, relax in the Olive Garden or explore the kitchen gardens. Enjoy a dinner at The Swan just a moment’s walk away.

Day 2: 75 miles

Today’s circular tour takes you round the northern part of the Cotswolds. Surrounded by rolling green hills, dotted with sheep that made the area so rich from the wool trade, visit the towns that prospered during those times. Start with lovely Northleach and then drive onto the stunningly pretty villages of Lower and Upper Slaughter. Head on to Stow on the Wold, a town that made its fortune on the medieval wool trade. Continue on to the quintessentially English, hilltop village that is Snowshill, owned by the National Trust and then the pretty village of Broadway, just over the border in Worcestershire, where the Cotswolds join the Vale of Evesham. Broadway makes a great place to stop for lunch in one of the fine restaurants dotted along the wide main street. Proceed to Hidcote and the famous gardens and then on to Chipping Norton and Burford, before heading back to Southrop.

Day 3: 100 miles

Visit the beautiful village of Bibury, with its famed Arlington Row, before driving onto Barnsley, where Barnsley House (now a hotel) has gorgeous gardens by Rosemary Verey. Then it’s on to the Cotswold Water Park followed by the lovely town of Tetbury. Westonbirt Arboretum is the next point of interest. Then turn north to Stroud and Painswick Rococo Gardens. Head onto Winchcombe and Hailes Abbey. Drive back towards Southrop, visiting Chedworth Roman Villa.

Day 4:

Depart for home at your leisure after a fabulous breakfast.

Accommodation

Thyme is a collection of 17th-century, honey-hued stone cottages scattered across the sprawling Southrop Manor estate and offers a classic country break in the Cotswolds. Well, almost: the green pastures, home-farmed cuisine and assorted heirlooms are present and correct, but look closer and you’ll spy mod-rustic interiors and a cookery school prepping future Michelin-star holders. The rooms are situated in the houses and cottages around the courtyard to the north of the magnificent barns. They are a moment’s walk away from the reception and Baa which sits adjacent to the beautiful Tithe Barn. The Baa is an elegant drawing room where teas, herbal infusions and coffees are served throughout the day. There is a wonderful wine and cocktail list which specialises in carefully selected English wines, sparkling wines and botanical cocktails which take seasonal inspiration from the herbs growing in our gardens, water meadows and hedgerows. With few exceptions, everything on your plate is grown or farmed on site. Thyme has a two-acre kitchen garden for herbs and vegetables; eggs come from the resident hens, quail and geese, and lambs and pigs are reared in the grounds. The hotel recycles and composts waste, heating comes from a wood-pellet-fuelled boiler or a ground-source heat pump (in the Tithe Barn and cookery school). Dinner is recommended at The Swan pub, just a few moments away in the village centre, a lovely pub-restaurant that has stayed true to its country-pub roots, championing localism (ingredients’ ancestry is traced on the menu) and dishing up hearty portions. Dishes are mostly modern British, with a little Italian and French influence. Breakfast is served in the Tithe Barn.