Bath and Cotswolds

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. More »