blogging around the world the cotswolds

7/28/2019 Blogging Around the World the Cotswolds

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Blogging AroundThe World

Cover Design: Cara WilliamsPhotography: Cara WilliamsCopyright 2006 by Cara WilliamsAll rights reserved

By Cara Williams

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Where are we going!? 3Chapter 2: Cheese Rolling 6Chapter 3: Unsatisfactory Roast 8

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My amazing 33rd birthday present from Faye and Amy was a surprise trip awayfor the weekend...

Chapter 13rd May 2013

I was picked up from home by Amy at 5.30pm on a beautiful sunnyFriday. We then collected Faye from work in Chiswick and set off for(destination unknown). All I was told was that the journey would takeabout 2.5 hours.

Luckily for them, mygeography is appaling so I hadno idea where we were, evenwhen we pulled up outside'The Old House'. I didntrecognise 'ChippingCampden' either but wasvery excited when I finally

found out that we were in theCotswolds.

Our accommodation for thenext two nights was a beautiful 17 th century farm house in the village ofEbrington, in the North Cotswolds.

The owner, Tim welcomed us and showed us around. He and his wife,Konstantina were lovely hosts and made us feel welcome straightaway.

We dumped our stuff in our room (wellit was actually a very spacious attic)and headed out for the 3 mile driveto the village centre to find somedinner. The village/town is pretty in akind of 'Bath' way. The buildings are allstone and the streets are cobbled,but the place is void of people. It iseery.

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We were warned that 9pm is cut off time for food, so we stoppedpretty much in the first place we saw and it happened to be the bestItalian in town; Caminetto. It was like walking into someones house. Ifelt like we were sitting down to a cream tea rather than dinner, butdodgly floral sofas aside, the food was amazing. We all had the fish pie

and it was in the words of Zoe, divine.

The meal (and wine) came to 45 which was really good value.

After dinner, (as the whole village was deserted!) we headed back tothe house. Tim and Konstantina were in the living room chatting toMary a lovely Australian lady, who was on a retirement trip with herhusband. She was eternally optimistic and positive about Britain, eventhough she had had an horrific accident in London which had runiedher teeth. She had huge braces on both sets of teeth and had trouble

talking, (well actually she managed to talk just fine!)

4th May 2013

After a home cooked breakast (with freshly baked bread), Konstantinashowed us around their 'garden', which is more like three football

pitches side by side. They havea chicken coop, hugetrampoline, allotment,greenhouse, large pond and

outside dining area, plus morespace.

We had looked up things to doearlier online and decided tohead to the Cotswold Farm Park(about 20 minutes away). Theonly reason we decided to go

there was that at our 'what do we want to do this weekend' brainstorm,

Faye and I both said 'feed animals' for some reason.

It was quite a cold day, but itwas worth the 8.50 entrance, aswe bought animal food andspent ages hand feeding piglets,goats and lambs...

After the farm, we moved ontothe idyllic village of Bourton-On-Water, which is meant to be the'Little Venice' of the Cotswolds. It

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was a tiny olde worlde village with a gorgeous river running through itwhere and everyone had congregated to sunbathe.

We stopped for a coffee before going for a walk along the river.

During our walk, we were quite disturbed to see a duck desperatelytrying to escape from a 'gang' of other ducks in the river. Do ducksform gangs!?

Our next stop was the Broadway Tower, which was built in 1798 byGeorge William 6th Earl of Coventry, as a gift for his wife.

It is an impressive gift in a beautiful location, from which you can see a360 degree panoramic of the surrounding landscape.

We arrived at the tower at 6pm and thought we were too late to climbthe tower, but the tour guide said he would do a special tour just for us.

The tower has four floors (all perfectlyround) with windows all round.

One floor is dedicated to WW2 and theguide unlocked the cabinets with actualartefacts from the war,(including a modelof a Lancaster Bomber which was used in

training exercises during the war) and let ushandle them. It is dangerous to give meanything of value, but I managed not tobreak anything for once.

The tour guide was great (but very nerdy)and invited us back the next morning, for atour of the nuclear bunker. As tempting as

that was (!), we had some other cool and trendy activities in mind forthe next day; namely Cheese Rolling and Morris Dancing.

I'll come back to that, but for now, we were hungry again, so weheaded back to Chipping Campden to find food. The internetrecommended 'The Eight Bells' for food, but they were fully booked.They said we should try 'The Kings Head', but they were full too...thiswent on from place to place until we found 'Maharaja', where theycould 'squeeze us in' at 8.30pm.

It was Mayday weekend, but we hadnt bargained on the entirepopulation of the Cotswolds eating in the restauarnts down this street.

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Chapter Two

After a drink in the Red Lion down the road, we headed back for our'okayish' Indian meal and giggled a lot, while talking aboutembaressing memories...snib

When we finished eating, we expected the street to be full of drunk

people, but nthey were still deserted. All the pubs had closed and itwas just us on the road. Its so weird!

We got back to The Old House at midnight.

5th May 2013

It was Easter Sunday andKonstantina had made ussome traditional Bulgariansweet donuts for breakfast.Today was the Greek Orthodox Easter and thedonuts, (which were coveredin lemon and sugar) werepart of her traditional Easterbreakfast. She had also hardboiled some eggs andpainted them, ready for thetraditional 'egg fight'. To betechnical, the aim of the 'fight' is for opponents to smash their eggsagainst ech other, until one cracks. The person with the cracked egg isthen out.

In this case, Konstantina's 8 year old daughter Naomi, emergedtriumphant.

We spent some time chatting with Naomi over breakfast she said shewas a Dr Who fan. I said that Tom Baker was my favourite doctor andasked nher what she thought of him. She said 'he was sour!'. I thoughtthat was brilliant coming from an 8 year old.

At midday, we headed off to Mary Arden's Farm, in Stratford. Goingback to my earlier Cheese Rolling/Morris Dancing dilemma, we had allagreed that we wanted to see some authentic Mayday entertainment

while we were in the country and those seemed to be our two options.

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The cheese rolling was about a 2 hour drive away though, so we optedfor Morris Dancing. The farm was celebrating Mayday with sometraditional tudor music and dress, a falconry demonstration, traditionaldancing and archery.

It was 10 to get in but wasntquite what I had expected. Forone thing, all the activities weregeared up for 10 year olds, not33 year olds...it was a 25 acreplot of little people and theirparents...there was the oddpensioner, but we didnt care, aswe saw a calf feeding from itsmum and watched the

fascinating falconry display.

I've never been a fan of birds they are boring and selfish, but the barnowl, falcon and eagle owl were actually quite amazing.

The handler admitted that he had absolutely no controol over the birdsand the only reason they would come to him was because they knewthay'd get food. There was a lot of waiting around, as the birds refusedto fly to him when called and it took some time for him to entice thefalcon to demonstrate how he feeds, by swooping to catch it from the

end of a piece of rope.

I noticed the handler had a black eye and couldnt help but ask if oneof the birds had done it. He said that the eagle owl had attacked himas he entered its cage. He hadnt warned the bird that he wasapproaching (which you have to do apparently) and so it panickedand broke his nose, gave him a black eye and huge cut on his face.I'll stick to dogs.

After the falconry display, we wanted to try archery, but soon realised

the maximum age for the activity was about 4. The other option was towatch the crowning of the king and queen of the festival (again, 4year olds), so we decided to move on to Stratford.

As we entered the town, it was absolutely heaving with people. Therewas a huge open air market, music, food and activity. As we drove tofind a parking space, there were people lining the road. I felt likeroyalty, until I realised they were all watching the classic car paradebehind us.

We found a parking spot across from a busy pub, but it requiredreverse parallel parking. It took some time to get in and we were all

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Chapter Three

becoming more and more aware of the spectators smirking at us fromthe pub. I then had to scramble across the drivers seat to get out.When we finally emerged from the car, we got a huge round ofapplause.

Red faced and gigling, we wandered around the market, at the homemade clothes, jams, chutneys and cheeses...we then wandered to tryand find Shakespeares House (but when we realised it was 15 to getin), we decided to look at it from afar.

Stratford is quite nice it reminds me of Uxbridge...mix of old and new,but the river area is lovely, so we decided to have an ice cream andgo rowing. Can I just have a little moan about the price of ice cream -2.20!! (20p for a flake) That is disgusting as far as I'm concerned andthat wasnt even in London.

We went rowing and all had a go at it it was really relaxing and the weatherwas amazing for it. It was just a shamethat I lost my sunglasses somewhere and

didnt realise that my cardigan had beenpartly submerged in the water when Iput it in my lap for safekeeping. As I gotout of the boat, I had a huge wet patchon my crotch and to make mattersworse, I tripped while getting out andgrabbed onto the 19 year old 'boatman'for dear life, in front of a queue ofpeople waiting for a boat.

We went back to the market to buy giftsfor people and stroke some more birds ofprey and then stopped for a drink inCafe Rouge. I had a Cidre (compared to Magners, its meh) and got alittle freaked by the two guys sitting opposite us, who were clearlylistening to our conversation and looking at us. When Faye asked mewhere the toilets were, one of the guys piped up and gave her verydetailed directions(!)

We had been sensible and booked a table for dinner this evening as

everyone was going on about The Eight Bells, we had booked a tablefor 7pm. It was a lovely pub with wooden beams and wooden dcor.

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There was also a Ben Afflek lookalike barman, who made the pub lookmuch more attractive!

I ordered a roast beef dinner and it turns out that it was a mistake. I am

not a huge fan of roasts and even less so of beef, so Im not sure whatpossessed me. I didnt really like it and had food envy of Amy's Greekfood.

After some dessert and more drinks and giggles, we headed back tothe house. Yet again, the streets were deserted.

We had a bit of a chat and started packing, before passing out.

6th May 2013

We were all sad to be leaving today. We had to be back in London by3.30pm, as I was off on another birthday surprise that evening.

We had our last breakfast and headedout to see Hidcote Gardens beforestarting our journey back. The gardenswere a mile from the house, so we walkedto them across fields and picturesquecountryside. It took is a while to find our

way in. We ended up walking around theperimeter of the gardens, where thesheep live...eventually we found a gateand wandered around the gardens. Theywere pretty and the landscaping waslovely. It was a nice way to end the trip.

We got back to the house and had acoffee with Tim and Konstantina, beforemaking our merry way back to London.

Holiday Song: Paradise

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