Have we reached peak Cotswolds? Not if the queues outside Diddly Squat Farm Shop near the village of Charlbury are anything to go by. Locals bemoan the traffic jams around Jeremy Clarkson’s estate as fans flock from far and wide to take home a bottle of the ‘cow juice’ from the Clarkson’s Farm TV series.
Clarkson’s tongue-in-cheek product is a wry nod to the area’s reputation for rural chic, forged by the likes of Lady Bamford’s Daylesford Organic farm shop – where a scented candle will set you back £49 – and Nick Jones’s Soho Farmhouse, where a stay in a luxury ‘piglet house’ costs £395 a night.
These luxury brands have helped to mythologise the Cotswolds as a sort of rural utopia – a place where the great and the good come to live out their country fantasies without sacrificing any of the glitz offered by the city. House prices have soared as a result.
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