Life, Literature, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Tour of the Cotswolds

The following information I learned from Philip Baum, my tour guide in the Cotswolds. If you have ever seen the British show Vets in Practice and paid attention to the narrator's voice, then you know exactly how Philip's accent sounded. He was a wonderful guide, part architectural historian, part linguist, part comedian.

The Cotswolds is an 880 square mile area west of Oxford. "Cote" was an Old English word meaning 'an enclosure for an animal' and "wold" meant 'bare, rolling hillsides.' This picturesque area used to be THE place for raising sheep for wool in England, but the Industrial Revolution brought the steam-powered loom for which the Cotswold wool was too brittle. This new technology knocked the Cotswolds off the map for about 200 years, but now the villages are sustained by agriculture, raising sheep for meat, and tourism (British citizens vacation here as well). This is an area where you will still find estate villages with a lord of the manor and people who rent from the lord and work in the fields. Some villages we drove through, and in other villages we were able to stop, shop, and eat. All of the villages today have building restrictions and must build using either Cotswold stone or reconstituted stone that looks like Cotswold stone. The British government has recognized this area as a place of extraordinary beauty and values its history and preservation.

A bicycle parked outside my B&B this morning.

Classic.

Notice that they don't use mortar in their walls.

In the village of Taynton

How soon can the Loosens move in?

A duck race for charity taking place in Bournton-on-the-Water

Idea for an MSL fundraiser?

There are 30 million sheep of over 300 breeds in England.

In Upper Slaughter. "Slaughtre" was an Old English word for 'wet place.'

Upper Slaughter is one of only 14 "doubly thankful" villages in England. That means that none of the men they sent to WWI or WWII died.

This baptismal font dates back to 1320. In Victorian times, they found it ugly and replaced it. People found it buried in the churchyard within the past ten years and replaced the Victorian font with it.

St. Peter's Church in Upper Slaughter

This carving is about 900-1,000 years old.

A lavendar farm

I wish I could include a link to the scent of this field.

Chipping Campden celebrates the Olympics at its market hall from 1627.

Students, name the famous playwright from Stratford-on-Avon.

They advertise ice cream cones everywhere. I had to get one.

Our guide Philip at a "mideval cart wash." They didn't want the muddy wheels of the carriages dirtying up Chipping Campden.

This tomb has carvings on top of the people lying inside. I found this to be very bizarre. The story, too, is that the woman didn't want her carving revealed until after she died, but she lived to be 95 and her carving was revealed when she was 80. Awkward...