Cotswold Cottage Weekend

Although I can’t complain about weekend trips around Europe, I am especially keen to stay close to home and get to know England while I am living here. Last spring, as I recounted in a past blog, I headed down to Cornwall for a cottage weekend with some girlfriends.

I have been to a few other counties over the last 20 months, mostly the ‘shires like Oxfordshire, Yorkshire and Hampshire. This past weekend I headed out to Gloucestershire, and the world famous Cotswold’s, for our second annual girls’ cottage weekend.

The Cotswold’s are a range of hills in west-central England also known as the Heart of England. The name apparently translates as “sheep enclosure in rolling hillsides”, incorporating “wold” which means hills. The area is characterized by adorable towns and villages built of the underlying Cotswold stone, a yellow limestone.

Our little cottage was in Stow-on-the-Wold, a market town on the top of an 800-foot hill. It was built of the typical stone and located around the corner from the oldest inn in England, dating back to 974 AD, but its inside was newly renovated and very modern.

It was the perfect base for eight expats (six Canadians, an American and an Aussie) to explore the rustic surroundings but also return to a home with cozy beds, a roaring fireplace and full kitchen. We ate well, we drank well, and we walked for miles and miles through rolling green countryside spotted sporadically with stone villages.

After a post-work train ride from London, equipped with snacks and bottles of vino, we arrived in the Cotswold’s for a relaxing evening in our weekend home. We woke the next morning to the sound of pounding rain on the stone roof and our hopes for a lovely hiking day were temporarily dashed. But after breakfast the rain stopped, the sky cleared and the wellies were no longer necessary.

We set out from Stow-on-the-Wold, following a public footpath through fields of undulating rain-kissed hills, pastures of horse, cow and chicken, and eventually followed the River Windrush into Bourton-on-the-Water. The picturesque town, often known as the Venice of England, was the perfect spot to end our hike and enjoy a pint of local bitter with some fish and chips.

We were shattered from the trek, filled up with beer and battered fish, so after exploring some shops we took a rest in the grass along the river. Too tired to duplicate our hike, we caught the local bus back to our little village.

After some hot showers and baths, couch lounging and food prep, we lit another roaring fire, opened a few more bottles of wine, and tackled a spread of cheese, crackers, meats and olives. Dinner was Mexican – fajitas, homemade guacamole, the works. The eating just went on and on.

The night spun into more bottles of wine and a spontaneous dance party that somehow ended up including costumes. It was a fun ladies’ night, the perfect one after our gorgeous day outside.

With Sunday we knew that only a few hours separated us from our train journey back to the chaos of London. So we went for a local hike and wandered around the village, then stopped at a tearoom for lunch (I had a Welsh rarebit, cheese and Worcestershire sauce on toast) and cream tea (accompanied by fresh scone, jam and clotted cream).

There was a lot of eating and drinking this weekend, but a lot of exercise as well. Not sure if we quite made that perfect balance, but I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything.