It’s harder than ever to get away from it all in the Cotswolds. Come Friday night, west Londoners pack their bags and descend on the countryside. Many ‘up from Londoners’ head to places such as Soho Farmhouse. The success of Clarkson’s Farm, a hit TV show based at the former Top Gear presenter’s Cotswolds patch, has only added to the chaos.
The Cotswolds’ blessing – its proximity to the capital – has become its curse. Trudging around the area’s beautiful towns and village isn’t what it once was. Fortunately, though, there is a way to escape the hordes and still enjoy the Cotswolds.
You could do worse than follow a simple tip: steer clear of the four Bs – Bibury, Burford, Broadway and Bourton-on-the-Water. Instead of these tourist traps, head north. Many visitors settle for the eastern and southern fringes of the Cotswolds. Towns and villages such as Chipping Norton soak up the majority of the tour buses that clog up the streets. But the more central parts of the Cotswolds, which have the same appeal as their southern neighbours, manage to avoid the hordes. Reaching these bits from the capital takes 20 minutes extra. But stay in the car for that little bit longer and you’ll be glad that you did.
The Guitings – Temple Guiting and Guiting Power – are the pick of the bunch. If you’re seeking honey-stone buildings, ancient churches, pubs without the pretentiousness and no crowds, you’d be hard pressed to find a better place to base yourself. The area is also rich in history: the temple in its name refers to the Knights Templar, which once had a base here.
Even today the area is unspoilt. Much of the credit for this goes to the Guiting Power Amenity Trust, which owns many of the houses in Guiting Power and prevents them being bought up as second homes. The village has a wonderful old post office selling local grub. The Cotswolds Guy, a delicatessen, also specialises in food sourced from the area. The village’s church, St Michael’s and All Angels, which sits on the edge of rolling fields, is one of the most beautiful in the Cotswolds. The village also hosts the Guiting Music Festival, where classical, jazz and blues musicians gather each July.
Temple Guiting is just up the road: carved in two by the River Windrush, the village is only ten miles or so from Cheltenham but feels a world away. The highlight here is the beautiful 14th-century Temple Guiting manor, which Nikolaus Pevsner described as ‘one of the finest, if not the very best of the small Cotswold Tudor houses’. Once owned by Oxford’s Oriel College, the house is where the college’s bigwigs came for some summer respite. Now you can do the same: it’s available to rent as a holiday home. While the house itself is ancient, the property and the estate offer plenty of mod-cons: a heated swimming pool, tennis court, play area, hot tub and wild swimming lake. There’s also a barn available for hire: the name hardly does justice for a house kitted out with beautiful artwork and luxury furnishings that must rank as one of the best places to stay in the Cotswolds. Staying here gives you a taste of what it is like to be lord of the manor.
Temple Guiting is well placed for exploring some of the most unspoilt parts of the Cotswolds. If you’re into historic houses, you could do worse than sidestep Blenheim Palace and head to Sudeley Castle: the only private property in England that has a Queen (Katherine Parr) buried there. Although Oliver Cromwell did his best to wreck the house, the ruins of the old buildings – where Richard III once dined – and more modern, if not still ancient, parts of the castle are one of the Cotswolds’ highlights.
Compton Verney is another manor house worth visiting: its art collection is one of the finest outside the capital. And if haunting ruins are your bag, Minster Lovell – the remains of a stately home built in the 1430s – are hard to beat as a place for a breezy autumnal stroll. Kiftsgate Court Gardens is a lesser-known alternative to Hidcote’s famous gardens. Refreshingly it also doesn’t belong to the National Trust.
Another good way of finding some peace in the Cotswolds is fairly straightforward: ditch the car. Opting for two, rather than four, wheels means you can reach places the tour buses can’t. Cotswolds National Landscape has a good selection of off-the-beaten-track routes, ranging from adventures through forests on its Charlbury loop to a route that takes in the source of the River Thames. You’ll have to stretch your imagination to realise that these boggy fields feed the river that dominates central London 100 miles away. Alternatively, if you’re feeling lazy, Cotswold Electric Bike Tours have a good choice of routes from north to south.
Even in the busiest patches of the Cotswolds, it’s still possible to get some peace and quiet, as long as you arrive early. If you do want to visit one of the four Bs, get there for 8 a.m. and you’ll have the place virtually to yourself, particularly out of season. An early trip means sacrificing a visit to the shops, but given the identikit tourist tat on offer in many of them, this is no great loss.
If you’re not an early riser, though, you should focus on the fringes of the most famous Cotswolds towns. Snowshill, just outside Broadway, is a good option. This quirky National Trust property is a great place for hoarders to gather some inspiration. Nearby Broadway Tower is the best viewpoint in Britain: on a clear day, you can see 16 counties from the hill.
In the woods outside Winchcombe lies one of the Cotswolds’ most beautiful spots. In Spoonley Wood is the remains of a Roman villa, complete with mosaic. ‘I cannot tell you how odd it felt to be standing in a forgotten wood in what had once been, in an inconceivably distant past, the home of a Roman family, looking at a mosaic laid at least 1,600 years ago when this was an open sunny space, long before this ancient wood grew up around it,’ wrote Bill Bryson in his Notes from a Small Island. His book sold millions. But thankfully, the crowds have stayed away. Perhaps they’re too busy in Bourton-on-the-Water.
Rates for Temple Guiting Manor start from £1,000 per night. For more information visit The Luxury Travel Book.
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