The Call Of The Cotswolds

Aug 27, 2012

On Thursday, August 23rd, we awoke early, packed our bags, had breakfast and then picked up our rental car at the airport - the convenience  of claiming our car at the airport and not dealing with London traffic is why we stayed at Heathrow instead of London proper.

We thought we would use the GPS that Google offers (and it's great ... as long as one has a cell connection) to guide us around England. So, stupidly, we had no map, no guide book, no nothing. We are such laid back travelers that we believed that we could find our way around a strange country without any help save our smart phone. Well, that was true but only to some extent and that hubris did get us into trouble a couple of times. Nothing serious, just delays, which I'll detail later on.

Our Peugeot 3008 mini-van.
NOTE: You can clck on any photo to see it larger.

Oxford, the famous, and ancient, university town of the aristocracy and privileged, is only an hour or so from London and even closer from Heathrow. That was our first stopping point of the day. We'd have a nice lunch (didn't happen) and a walk around the town with its midieval buildings and sprawling meadows.

We parked our car in an underground lot and set out to explore.

Mark checks out the lay of Oxford town.

We popped into the local tourist office and picked up a map with a short walking tour that would take us through some of the university's more interesting buildings. Our first stop was Bodleian Library which is a working library to this day. It is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, dating back to the early 17th century but with roots to the 15th.

The Bod, as it's called, is one of a group of buildings that form the historic heart of the university. One outstanding building is the Radcliffe Camera - camera referring to the Italian word for "room." It was built in 1734 and houses a science library today.

Radcliffe Camera on Catte Street.

Further along our walk, we came to Merton College and its chapel. The University is made up of many colleges and this one bordered beautiful Merton Field and beyond that a vast meadow: Christ Church Meadow, its green fields vanishing into the distance. A broad dirt promenade divided the two fields and people strolled along it to enjoy the view in all directions.

This the chapel of Merton College.

Mark strolls along Merton Field.

Lunch was at a coffee shop but was a disappointment. Mark's "caesar" salad consisted of some pale iceberg lettuce topped with bottled ranch dressing. My "homemade" tomato soup was bland and tasteless. I hasten to add that the cafe was not typical of the basically good cuisine that we enjoyed throughout our trip.

We strolled back to the car park to start our drive to our evening's inn: The Old Stocks Hotel in Stow-On-The-Wold. [MAP].

The Cotswolds are a region of hills in central and southwestern England. A wold, we read, is a high and open place. The region is dotted with lovely and quaint market towns, situated on the wolds and many populated with midieval buildings. Back in the day, sheep farming required the driving of your herd to market in the center of town. Our hotel was situated on Market Square, one such sheep-trading plaza.

Market Square in Stow-On-The-Wold.

After unpacking, we had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar and noted that the price of cocktails here were about a quarter of those in our fancy-shmancy London hotel. Dinner was at a wonderful Indian restaurant recommended by a friendly British woman and her daughter who happened to be walking down the street with us. Indian cuisine is ubiquitous throughout England and is very popular.

The next day we strolled about the town, taking in old St. Edward's church, cute tourist shops and its beautiful and narrow streets.

St. Edwards Church. He's the patron saint of Stow.

Mark outside a saddlery in Stow.

A Cotswold gent out for a shop.

We checked out of the hotel and packed the car. We were on our way to Wales and our friends, Ann and Alex, who have an apartment there. But first, I suggested that we take a look at a couple of other Cotswold towns. We drove to Moreton-On-Marsh and spent another hour there, perusing the shops and the street. Not as old as Stow but nevertheless, another lovely Cotswold town.

From Oxford to Stow to Moreton-on-Marsh.
Click to see larger.

It was starting to rain and the forecast called for more, so it was time to get started on the road to Wales. The GPS said 2 hours or so and that became the standing joke of the day. No matter how far and how long we drove, Wales was just "2 hours away." The final length of our trip? Seven hours! Many factors intruded: our smartphone constantly lost its cell connection in the country, leaving us alone with our wits, and nothing more, to find our way. Once, after driving for an hour away from Stow, we came across a signpost that said "Stow, 9 miles." My brain would not accept it and I offered an interpretation: "that just means a road that goes toward Stow. It's not referring to the town itself." Sure, sure. But wrong! No, we had gone, somehow, in a complete circle, ending up just about where we started.

The second factor, turning two hours into seven: the traffic. Aside from the modern Motorways, the so-called "M" roads, Britain has many old and very narrow roads and they intersect other old and very narrow roads at roundabouts (what we call traffic circles in the States). Roundabouts are great but only when they serve a limited number of cars. Trouble is this: there are too many freakin' cars on the road and then the elegant fluidity of the circles fails and they become huge bottlenecks. Signage testifies to that as they warn you: "may be queues ahead." And there sure were. Every few miles - another two mile backup as cars negotiated the roundabout.

Finally, we reached the Severn Bridge which crosses the river of the same name and separates England from Wales. The river then broadens to become the Bristol Channel which opens into the Atlantic. Hurrah! Only two more hours to Swansea and our friends' house. But it wasn't to be. The M4 motorway was clogged and almost at a standstill. We hadn't realized it but the Friday we were travelling on was the beginning of Britain's August Bank Holiday (equivalent to our Labor Day and marking the end of summer vacations). Londoners were streaming to holiday in Wales and we were part of that vast and very slow moving migration. Three of us four voted to get off the M4 and follow our belabored GPS along a parallel route. It worked - the road was moving and we just sailed along. About 40 minutes passed when we came to a sign that said "Welcome To England." It seems that our navigator had us correctly following the A48. However, we were following it in the wrong direction - east instead of west! We stared at the sign in disbelief. Again, denying the reality of our mistake, I tried to make it go away by concocting a scenario that the Wales / English border was convoluted and we must just have passed temporarily back into England but that, nevertheless, we were on the right road. But it was not to be:. We had, in fact, gone the wrong way and were back, once again, at the Severn River where we had been an hour before. Again, it was only "two hours to Swansea" ... all over again.

This time we proceeded, still staying off the clogged M4, westward to our destination and we finally reached it and our friends at 9:30 pm. Such good friends, who waited so patiently for us. A fine meal there for us - our travails only served to make our repast that much better. It didn't matter that our two hour trip took us seven. We were finally in Wales!

Our Wales of a story continues in my next post. Don't miss it.

To see all of our Cotswolds photos, just CLICK HERE.