KarenKM

I'm trying to get a handle on trip research for the English countryside and need some 'big picture' help to start. My first problem is that I'm confused by the plethora of areas, sub-areas and such--how far they are from each other, which ones have the type of old villages I'm interested in, how much I can see of which areas in what amount of time.

I know I want to visit the Cotswolds, for example; but I've also developed an interest in the Shropshire canal areas, Nantwich, etc, but am clueless how far it is from the Cotswolds, or which 'canal areas' are considered the prettiest and/or, oxymoronically, least touristed... Others say the lakes areas in the north are great, but I have no sense of scale.

So, some questions which will help me formulate other questions:

1. The best book or guide with good photos of villages by the countryside area they're in?

2. The best online maps for areas of English countryside as they relate to one another? And/or a favorite print map?

3. I've read some helpful posts here by FlannerUK on the Cotswolds, but wonder if there are enough villages to warrant 2 different bases, or choosing just one like Chipping Camden, and doing long daytrips is adequate.

4. If you had a month, what sort of ideal 'English Countryside Village Hopping Itinerary' would you create? Which villages would you choose to stay in to explore which favorite English countryside areas which are how far apart? (And what are their names--the areas?)

For orientation to me: I travel solo (57), would probably rent or lease a car (if I can get over my fear of driving a stick by myself as a first time England driver), would probably choose an apartment or cottage rental in each area; am more interested in soaking up beauty while meandering lovely country roads than doing the typical tourist things; I enjoy ad-hoc run-ins with colorful old locals; and I'd probably choose September-October to avoid kids.

I'm fishing for anything which will help me get started on developing an overview of options, which will distill to desires.

Thanks so much,

Karen

janisj

Just a short answer now - but others will chime in w/ more.

W/ a month I would personally opt for 3 or 4 different 1-week rentals. W/ just 3, I'd spend the week in between two of the cottage stays by stopping in a couple of other areas for 2 or 3 days in B&Bs.

For the Cotswolds I'd rent 1 cottage for a base for the entire area. In a central-ish location like near Burford/Stow on the Wold/Winchcombe you could tour anywhere in reasonable times. It might warrant 2 weeks there - depending on where else you wanted to go.

Other areas to consider would include Suffolk over on the east side. The Yorkshire dales up north. (The Lakes aren't so much for "villages" as for pretty scenery). devon/Cornwall in the SW. And parts of Kent/East Sussex in the SE.

Some of these areas are quite distant from each other - but most cottages rent from Sat to Sat so you would have all day Sat to drive from one cottage to the next.

Flying open jaw in to the north like Manchester and out of London or vice versa would be helpful. For instance you could stay a week in Yorkshire, a week in the Cotswolds, a week in the SW and a week in Kent and fly out of LGW or LHR w/o having to backtrack.

wrrllw

I find "Google Earth" a great resource for travel planning. You can "see" the countryside you're going to visit, and, for locations where there are detailed images available, even get down to street level. It's super-easy to determine relative locations and distances. It's free to download; once installed, it'll change really help your planning!

wrrllw

I find "Google Earth" a great resource for travel planning. You can "see" the countryside you're going to visit, and, for locations where there are detailed images available, even get down to street level. It's super-easy to determine relative locations and distances. You can zoom in to get detail, & zoom out to get the big picture. Even the driving directions aren't bad. It's free to download; once installed, it'll really help your planning!

owain

Yes, use Google Earth....it still keeps Suffolk clouded in low-resolution mystery, keeping the place hidden from the hordes (Good advice above from janisj)

noe847

There are several trip reports that may help you.

Rickmav spent an extended time in England recently and has the following trip reports reflecting cottage rentals:

Yorkshire:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34937079

Suffolk:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34941319

Sussex/Kent:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34943207

Another trip report, based on 5 days exploring villages in Cornwall/Devon:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34841198

KarenKM

You guys/gals are great. I'm working on your suggestions, and really appreciate them. (I'm pretty new to Fodor's, as I hang a lot at Slow Travel, so it's nice to get leads to your goldmines here.)

Karen
http://web.mac.com/karenmickleson/iW...Backstory.html
http://tinyurl.com/2cq89n

KarenKM

Whoops, forgot to ask:

Is there a good map of England online you can recommend which shows me where the areas you mention (Yorkshire, Suffolk, Sussex/Kent, Cornwall/Devon) are in relation to each other?

I'm sure there are many, but I'm just asking for your recommendations on the best available.

Karen
http://web.mac.com/karenmickleson/iW...Backstory.html
http://tinyurl.com/2cq89n

flanneruk

Does it really matter what's the best available?

Just google "England county map" and pick anything. The Cotswolds are the left third of Oxfordshire and the right half of Gloucestershire. Shropshire is often abbreviateed Shrops - or even Salop.

KarenKM

Yo, Flanner. I should have said "most useful for one who's never been to England" instead of "best".

I've enjoyed your pointed local and political commentary on many threads.
-------

After spending the morning reading the great threads by rickmav & schuler, I've learned:

a. what hedgerows are and

b. that meandering the English countryside while driving solo will be much more frustrating than it was in Italy and France, where roundabouts made wrong turns fairly easy to correct

Not reasons to not do this trip, but will require some detailed planning and attitude adjustment.

Karen

TuckH

"The Shell Book of English Villages" 1980 Published by Michael Joseph Ltd.
available used at Barnes & Noble.

Nonconformist

Dorset is another good place for pretty villages IMO.

wrrllw

I still think that downloading and installing Google Earth will help you immensely, but meanwhile, this "static site" may give you what you're looking for... http://www.picturesofengland.com/map...nties-map.html

walkinaround

since you have such a deep interest in the english countryside, i would do some careful research to ensure that you are getting what you really want rather than what most tourists see when they yearn to see a bit of the 'countryside'.

i don't understand the fascination with the cotswolds that many overseas visitors have. it's more of an extended suburb or bedroom community for london than the real countryside. many houses sit unoccupied except at the weekends or, at worse, are only occupied a few days a year, if ever.

most of the 'attitude' is much more london than shire. £50,000 SUVs driven aggressively are the norm. there are many foreigners who have bought a place there to live out fantasies of being a lady or gentleman of the manor. another category is the pensioners who have sold up the mock tudor in surrey, hampshire, etc to live out the 'country life'. they subscribe to all of the country life magazines to learn how to live a country life. you might even hear them saying how the 'city people' just don't understand about hunting. it's really quite funny. all of these people keep barbour in business.

perhaps this is all slightly exaggerated but the point is that the cotwolds is more of a caricature of the countryside rather than the real countryside. many people worry about the hordes of tourists in the cotswolds (a legitimate concern) but most of the 'locals' are not really country people either.

it is beautiful but if you wish to experience real countryside, you can find much more of it in, for example, cornwall, devon, sussex, the lake district, most of the north, and many other places around the country. i only mention all of this because you have such a deep interest in the english countryside. cotswolds is fine for a casual visitor who just wants to see some pretty buildings on a day out from london. considering your aspirations, i think it is the wrong place to focus.

annhig

Hi Karen,

I think you would love the Devon and Cornwall countryside. North Devon, in particular is stunning.

Regarding hedgerows, beware the "cornish hedge" - it looks like a hedge, but in fact is a double-sided wall with earth in the middle - even slight scrapes can be very painful for the car and the wallet!

Best wishes, Ann

flanneruk

Maps:

You've listed some counties you're interested in: there' no online map I'm aware of that shows England by county then lets you drill down so you can route plan.

Any googled English county map will show you where the counties are, which is why it doesn't matter which one you use: you then need to remember the counties' location, and use Google Maps or Multimap for drilling down. The hybrid and satellite functions on Google Maps are pretty useless, IMHO, for your purposes: they pixellate far too quickly in rural England (probably all those MI5 safe houses, since you can get to much closer precision in urban England). Personally, I find Multimap more useful for route planning.

The English Tourist Board (www.enjoyengland.com) is the quickest compilation of region by region information. It doesn't use counties as the base for regional groupings, though. So you have to remembver where places are then pop back to Google Maps or Multimap.

There's a very useful zoomable canal map at www.waterscape.com. If it really is villages you're interested in, be aware that canals seldom go through them. They were practically all built to take goods from a mine or forest to a town by the most practicable route, bypassing population centres. So while they sometimes come through towns, they're often a mile or so (usually by an easily accesible footpath) from the nearest village. The oxymoron in your post is about tourism and canals: they're practically always totally deserted, except that some easily accessible towpath pubs get pretty chocker on sunny weekends. Especially during the Indian summer you're planning to visit, which is perfect walking weather. On such an occasion, just walk off to the nearest village.

If you're read my musings elsewhere, you'll have hreard vague rumours I believe the very best way to see the English countryside is on foot. There's nothing to be gained seeing ten villages in a day by car if you can see three by walking. The whole 120,000 miles of the footpath system is online and zoomable at the Get A Map feature at the Ordnance Survey site.

If it really is villages you're interested in, walkinaround's comments are confused and confusing. Here are mine:

The Cotswolds (SW Midlands) and Suffolk (East of London) are the gold standard: wealthy enough in late medieval times to get lots of nice buildings, impoverished in the early modern period, so little Victorian destruction (though a few vicars "restored" the churches, and ought to be roasting in Hell for it): got very popular recently for their proximity to London, but you practically can't change your front curtains without an Act of Parliament so all that new money has poured a ton of aspic over the areas for them to stay photogenically frozen in. Their economies are dominated by long-distance commuting, home working, knowledge intensive new industries and the like, so tourism is rarely visible, except in a few Cotswold villages during summer weekend daytimes.

Neither economy is particularly dependent on tourism (walkinaround's simply wrong), but agriculture is also in decline. Both are stil rural, but, especially in the Cotswolds, estate owners make their money from being rural conservators rather than growers or rearers of food. The towns and villages have virtually no connection with farming, though 99% of the land looks as if it's farm or woodland. You won't find any colourful old locals, though you'll probably bump into any number of more or less well known English actors hanging round their local pubs - as they seem to far more often than the biotech millionaires or day traders.

An awful lot of Sussex and Kent, to me, have a slightly suburban feel. They were much more heavily developed in the 19th century, and although suburbam sprawl was controlled after WW2, I never find driving a pleasure there. England's badly short of roads, so development has followed what roads there are and you rarely feel out of suburbia. Again, though, some excellent walking off the beaten path. Essentially glorified commuter territory

Rural Yorkshire. A lot of it is a macho version of the Cotswolds: stone walls instead of hedges, chunkier houses, more dramatic ups and downs. Got more restored in the 19th century (so there are practically no medieval church paintingss, which are astonishingly common in the Cotswolds and Sufolk - and Norfolk). Depends more on tourism, but this falls off during the week after late August Bank Holiday.

Shropshire. Personally, I always find it a bit dull and bland: an awful lot of the villages are full of newish (post 1840) buildings and look a bit - well, new. By the time you get NW towards Nantwich you start hitting bits of remaining Early Industrial period conserved buildings (often lovely, though too often operating only as minimalls full of discount knitwear - all Chinese, from Australian wool - shops), or the Footballers' Wives suburbs of Manchester (think small-scale Los Angelese without the tastefulness).

However, mainstream Shropshire (to which you MUST add Herefordshire) is the quietest, least light-polluted, part of England - and the canals are very, very pretty.

kleeblatt

My favourite places in our Somerset/Devon/Corwall trip last year was:

- Glastonbury at sunset (go to Tower hill at sunset: totally mystical and magical)

Northern Devon:

- Sampford Brett (very small village)
- Dunster
- Allerford and Selworthy (lunch in Allerford was the ultimate!)
- Lynton (very touristy and small though)
- Clovelly in the early evening (no tourists and no admission fee)
-Tintagel (have to know the history behind it though)
- Dartmoor (Chagford, Postbridge, Widecombe in the Moor and Buckland in the Moor (three or four beautiful houses))
- Totnes and Dartmouth (wish we could have seen more of that area)
- Sherborne (on our way back to London. Great market town.)

Wasn't excited about:
- Bocastle (some people like it but I thought there just wasn't much there)
- Padstow was OK. Very touristy
- Paignton (too busy and not quaint)
- Shaftesbury (after Sherborne, it was a let down. We saw Gold hill and found nothing else that intrigued us)

We had a smaller car to help us manouver down those country lanes. Speaking of country lanes, you didn't see much driving down them because of the hedges or whatever they were.

We did see LOTS of thatched roof houses.

walkinaround

>>>>>
Neither economy is particularly dependent on tourism (walkinaround's simply wrong)
>>>>>>

i never said that the overall cotswold economy is dependent on tourism, nor do i think it is. this area prospers because of the wealthy residents whose money comes from the city and much further (as you say). in fact, my main point was that it is not the tourists that compromise the cotswolds (in the context of real countryside), it's the residents.

as for being confused and confusing...this is really meaningless and dependent on how you interpret the OP's needs. if she wants to see villages, then there are many lovely ones in the cotswolds. if she wants to see and experience the english countryside, then this is not the best place to do this, for the reasons i mentioned. many statements in the OP point to her not wanting to see just a bunch of pretty buildings...for example:

>>>>>>>>>
am more interested in soaking up beauty while meandering lovely country roads than doing the typical tourist things; I enjoy ad-hoc run-ins with colorful old locals
>>>>>>>>>

the cotswolds is a caricature of the countryside. it suits people who want to take a quick look at the 'countryside' but it's not for someone wanting to get a real experience of english countryside.

just as an overseas visitor to new york might nip up to a westchester, fairfield or litchfield county village to see a bit of the 'countryside'....it's charming and there are some pretty old (relatively) villages but quickly one realises that, behind the clapboard, its more new york city, tokyo, london or moscow than real american countryside. also not unlike dordogneshire which is largely a caricature of french countryside.

i don't disagree with anything you say. in fact, you restate my point about who the cotswold 'country folk' really are quite nicely.

janisj

The Op is definitely interested in <u>villages</u> That is the main reason I agree w/ flanner that walkinaround's pots are really misleading, confused and confusing. The Cotswolds are THE place to go for a variety of (mostly) unspoiled villages w/i easy walking distance of one another. A few of the &quot;famous&quot; Cotswold villages do get overrun in the summer and on Spring weekends. But in the Fall the number of vistitors drops dramatically and even the &quot;honey pot villages&quot; are quiet.

The other areas I mentioned all have lovely villages too - but they are generally fewer and farther apart. There are some wonderful villages in the SW - both seaside and deep in the moors. And some of the prettiest are in Suffolk. There are some really good villages in the Dales, though some are pretty remote.

But for a village-centric visit IMHO one simply must include the Cotswolds or they miss the whole idea.

The Lakes for villages - c'mon

KarenKM

I'm so appreciating the discussion here--it gets at precisely the issues I'm wanting to understand more about--what to expect where; what tourism 'means' in these places outside June-August; who I might encounter. It's all really helpful.

I'm realizing that because of my unfamiliarity with England, I *was* incorrectly equating 'villages' with 'English countryside'. Traveling what I think of as the 'French countryside' has me driving through beautiful country interspersed with villages which melt my heart, where I'd stop and have lunch, then walk around taking pictures and talking to locals. So I figured it was similar in England. The English version of this seems so condensed--understandable given the difference in land mass.

As one whose primary interest is in soaking up and recording old and/or colorful beauty, quaint villages definitely float my boat; but I also enjoy landscapes. As a gardener, I have silly fantasies, I suppose, of coming across charming gardens of thatched old houses and conversing with puttering old men or women, maybe some not so old, about what they grow and how their lives have gone, sharing stories across the pond.

After reading trip reports here, I've sort of figured out (I think) that I'm not as likely to enjoy the east of London Kent/Sussex area as Suffolk or the part Schuler (thanks for your condensed list, Schuler, I so enjoyed your report!) wrote about (Somerset, Devon, Cornwall?).

I'm not into big castles or monuments you take a tour through, with formal knot gardens and such; nor am I a history buff, though I do appreciate knowing a bit of the socio-economic-political background like Flanner outlined. I enjoy beautiful churches mainly as meditative surcease from frenzy, and have seen enough religious art in Italy to do me for quite a while.

As for walking, well, I confess that I'm a bit of a slug, and my body would surely wish I changed in this regard. So researching which areas of walking paths would afford me a nice mix of not-too-hilly paths with photogenic villages along the way, perhaps in a long day's circle back to where I'm staying, will definitely be part of the plan.

Sorry to ramble, and I thank each of you for your helpful contributions. Your comments on the canal areas were great, Flanner--I was clueless what their surrounds are like.

I'll be looking into the mapping &amp; book suggestions, just haven't had time yet.

Karen

P.S. Anyone tackled England for the first time this way as a solo driver? (Maybe I should ask this at the solo travel forum instead.)