Cotswolds

We took the tube from our Airbnb in Camden to Heathrow where I got behind the wheel of a manual right-hand drive Citroën and we drove off to the Cotswolds. Two hours later we were unpacking our luggage in to a two hundred year old cottage that still has a functioning spring and spa in the basement. And soon after that we did what they do over there - we took a foot path to get to the nearest town, Stow-on-the-Wold. Where we found a pub and got ourselves a few pints. Followed by a basket of fish and chips with vinegar.

The Cotswolds are a funny sort of place. Besides Stow-on-the-Wold, there is Moreton-in-Marsh, Bourton-on-the-Water, Ascott-under-Wychwood, Chipping Camden and Chipping Norton, Little and Great Barrington, Upper and Lower Slaughter, and so on. The whole place is utterly beautiful in a understated way. No jagged peaks and crashing waves, but lots of rolling green hills and sheep and horses and dry stacked stone fences and small towns and villages older than dirt made out of honey colored Cotswold limestone.

And these lovely villages are connected by single lane winding roads with tall over grown hedges on both sides, and a complicated system of footpaths and maddeningly accurate and polite signage. Evan being the shortest could never see whatever the rest of us were looking at over the hedges and repeated at least one hundred times "I hate hedges unless they are in a maze".