John Linton ....apart from all the other places.
We had a late breakfast which is an indulgence that I would like to be part of my 'every day life' before setting out on a day of village hopping around our hotel home base (selected for that reason - that there were a lot of villages in the immediate area that had claims to "the prettiest village in the Cotswolds" - one even claiming to be "the Venice of the Cotswolds"). After six plus hours during which we visited six different villages and a local monument I can confirm that so many small towns and villages in this area of the Cotswolds are unbelievably beautiful and architecturally fascinating.
In the 'beauty contest' it was too close to call with Stow-on-the-Wold being our favourite small market town closely followed by Chipping Campden in the 'town contest' with Stanton and Stanway tying for prettiest village. It takes quite a time to understand that the majority of the buildings in many of these villages have their origins in the 11th century with buildings used and/or inhabited today that were originally built in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries still being used for the same purposes today as they were six or seven hundred years ago. Not only do they still look beautiful to 'modern eyes' but they are built so well there is little sign of repair or 'improvement' on the outside. Doubtless modern plumbing and electricity and gas have been added over the past 150 or so years but externally they appear unchanged.
We admired so many pubs in so many villages from the outside (drinking was a no no because I was driving except for test half pint of local cider that served to confirm that you should only drink cider in Somerset) and lost count of the number of them that could trace their origins back 700 plus years. They were all beautiful to me and I am a fairly prosaic person when it comes to arts and crafts architectural styles. The other major impact was the aroma of baking - in every village and small town we visited. We were very strong but we did try a sausage roll each and later in the day split a pastie/pasty. Both were delicious and you could have had your pick of baking in any place you stopped. Because the Cotswolds are a major tourist destination every cafe (of which there were many per town/village) appeared to be constantly full and combined the aromas of fish and chips and roast lunches with omnipresent aroma of freshly baked bread and other bakery items.
I think the record was in Bourton-on-the-Water where in one small village 'high street' we counted 31 cafes and 11 pubs - and that was ignoring the residential hotels of which there were some magnificent examples - the AA stars plastered around the walls would have been enough for a small constellation. The driving was pretty easy with only a few one track roads (between the strangely named villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter) and no alarms and excursions by being confronted by speeding on coming traffic. So we have 'done the Cotswolds' and will move back closer to London tomorrow to a place we stayed at two trips ago at Sonning on Thames where we enjoyed ourselves so much we promised we would go back which is very unusual for us.
I am sure there are lots of exciting things going on in the Australian telecommunications industry but I just can't find the time to read about them at the moment.
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