Bath and Cotswolds

Bath and Cotswolds Travel Guide

The rolling uplands of the Cotswold Hills represent the quintessence of rural England, as immortalized in countless books, paintings, and films. This blissfully unspoiled region, deservedly popular with visitors, occupies much of the county of Gloucestershire, in west-central England, with slices of neighboring Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, and Somerset. Together these make up a sweep of land stretching from Shakespeare Country in the north almost as far as the Bristol Channel in the south. On the edge of the area are three historic towns that have absorbed, rather than compromised, the flavor of the Cotswolds: Bath, among the most alluring small cities in Europe, offering up "18th-century England in all its urban glory," to use a phrase by writer Nigel Nicolson; Regency-era Cheltenham -- like Bath, a spa town with remarkably elegant architecture; and Gloucester, which holds an outstanding medieval cathedral and gives access to the ancient Forest of Dean, on the western edge of the area.

Bath rightly boasts of being the best-planned town in England. Although the Romans founded the city when they discovered here the only true hot springs in England, its popularity during the 17th and 18th centuries ensured its aesthetic immortality. Bath's fashionable period luckily coincided with one of Britain's most creative architectural eras, producing virtually an entire town of stylish buildings. The city powers have been wise enough to make sure that Bath is kept spruce and welcoming. In the past, Thomas Gainsborough, Lord Nelson, and Queen Victoria traveled here to sip the waters, which Charles Dickens described as tasting like "warm flatirons." Today people come to walk in the footsteps of Jane Austen, to visit Bath Abbey and the excavated Roman baths, or shop in an elegant setting.

North of Bath are the Cotswolds -- a region that more than one writer has called the very soul of England. Is it the sun, or the soil? The pretty-as-a-picture villages with the perfectly clipped hedges? The mellow, centuries-old, stone-built cottages festooned with honeysuckle? Whatever the reason, this idyllic region, which from medieval times grew prosperous on the wool trade, remains a vision of rural England. Here are time-defying churches, sleepy hamlets, and ancient farmsteads so sequestered that they seem to offer everyone the thrill of personal discovery. Hidden in sheltered valleys are fabled abodes -- Sudeley Castle, Stanway House, and Snowshill Manor among them. The Cotswolds can hardly claim to be undiscovered, but, happily, the area's poetic appeal has a way of surviving the tour buses, crowds, and antiques shops that sometimes pierce its timeless tranquillity. Here you can taste the glories of the old English village -- its stone slate roofs, low-ceiling rooms, and gardens; its atmosphere is as thick as honey, and equally as sweet.