The Cotswolds

The Cotswolds are a hilly area west of London that span across Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and a few other counties. The name comes from "cots", which are sheep pens, because the area used to have lots of sheep farms and produce a lot of wool, and "wolds" which is the old English word for hills. Hence, "Cotswolds" means the hills with sheep pens.

Today I am part of an organized tour to the Cotswolds and Blenheim ("Blen-im") Palace.

Got to Victoria Coach Station bright and early! *yawns*

Our first stop was Bibury, just a little town, with the famous Arlington Row that used to be storehouses for wool, but which have since been converted into dwellings.

Our tour guide is alright. Slightly lacking in confidence sometimes, but he's doing a good job having to tell the stories in both English and Japanese (there are 6 Japanese on the tour, so he's doing separate commentary for them). It's good just being able to follow along half asleep.

We're now in Burford. I opted out of having lunch with the group (you could pay extra and have lunch in a pub, i looked at the price and I was like I could do better than that), so I'm just chillin in a little teahouse, the Copper Kettle Tea Rooms.

Lunch is here!

****

After Burford we went to Bourton-on-the-water, which is also called the Venice of the Cotswolds. Really, there's just a little river running through the town.

I got a butterscotch chip Cotswold ice cream in a waffle cone and sat by the river and ate it. I don't know what the difference is between Cotswold ice cream and normal ice cream... it just tasted like ice cream to me, but the butterscotch was yummy :)

We were also lucky enough to see some builders making a dry stone wall. These are basically walls made from pieces of flat local Cotwold limestone, piled up on each other without mortar or cement to hold it together. Pretty impressive, really, cos they're pretty solid walls. They do put a layer of cement over the topmost layer of limestone, but that's just so people don't steal the stones, and also because on top of the stones lying flat, they put a layer of flat stones upright so that the jagged edges stick up. To keep the sheep from escaping, apparently.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone