Cotswolds, with gentle hillsides (wolds), sleepy villages and an achingly beautiful
countryside, is the most English part of England, which still preserves the
old-world charm, writes Sumitra Senapaty


The enormous green Cheltenham valley presents a beautiful picture

IT is hardly a two-hour drive, 40 miles west of London, but you seem to drive back three centuries. The Cotswolds are well-known for gentle hillsides (wolds), sleepy villages and for being so ‘typically English’. The countryside surrounding them is simply, achingly, beautiful. Ancient limestone buildings, slate-roofed, with low doors and steep narrow stairways, stand close together in yards, full of flowers. Tidy drystone walls border meandering streets.

On the map it’s a kind of no-man’s land, where the borders of Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire are knotted together, but on the ground it’s a succession of quiet delights, old manor houses, ancient churches, glorious views, and the kind of pubs, which are difficult to pass by.

Cotswolds derives its names from two words. A ‘cot’ is a sheep enclosure, and ‘wolds’ means rolling hillsides; so it’s not hard to see how this place got its name.

The bleating of ewes and their lambs seems to be the evergreen background music, as one comes across the market town, Moreton in Marsh and its reputed pub, The Plough. "What’s your preference?" shouts the bar owner. "I’d recommend the Shepherd’s Pie." It is a sound advice.

Walking these wolds is the best way to see and experience the most English part of England. Various pub-eateries have sprung up all over the Cotswolds. Besides traditional British beer, these pubs serve quality wines and well-cooked organic food; there is the Village Pub at Barnsley, or the Churchill Arms near Hidcote, or the King’s Arms at Stow-on-the-Wold (which occupies a hilltop, giving rise to the saying, "Stow-on-the-Wold, where the wind blows cold.") While you are at it, you can browse around the antiques shops in Burford and Stow, where Huntington stocks truly old stuff, from medieval to Queen Anne.

Bright lights — even traffic lights — are few and far between. It is the homely rhythms of life in the Cotswolds that sustain fellow walkers. Buying and roasting spring Cotswold lamb and serving it with asparagus from Evesham, near Broadway, and matchless Jersey Royal potatoes, watching the lovely swans, as they glide through the Bourton waters, are some of the sights and smells of country, filled with roses, delphiniums, peonies and sweet peas.

The directions in the guide seem simple enough: "Take the path by the hedgerow, cross the stile and follow the path across the field." But then hedgerows and stiles are all around and there are green fields sprinkled with flowers beyond them all. It is a many mile ramble through the Cotswold way.

To the English, walking long distances is a matter of course; for others it can be the appeal of walking through a culture: Climbing over a 6,000-year-old drystone wall one and stopping at a cheese monger’s shop. The thatched-roof cottages with roses and beech forests conjure up old-world images.`A0

One walks within inches of people’s houses, through churchyards filled with weathered tombstones, over windy golf courses where sheep have the right of way, through ancient hill forts with Saxon ghosts, and into villages with cottages that have names like Treacle Mary’s, Rosary Cottage, Harmony, and Humblebee. Each village has its own ale or bitter with names like Old Hooky, Cotswold Genesis and Old Speckled Hen.

Flowers and nature abound at Duntisbourne Leer, one of the most peaceful, hidden villages in all the Cotswolds. The village brook seems just like a pretty cottage garden with bean wigwams and sweet-pea canes, and rows of blue delphiniums, and sweet Williams, mixed up with lines of feathery headed carrots, fresh green onions and leafy potatoes.

West of Leer there are tiny villages, each one seemingly more memorable than the last. There is Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter, Stanton with its 11th century church, Chipping Camden with its working marketplace, Bourton-on-the-Water with its stone footbridges spanning the midtown stream and countless more.

In the late afternoon, high above Cheltenham, the enormous green valley presents a soothing picture. A fellow walker points across a sparkling river to the misty western hills, and says, "Oxford and Stratford upon Avon are just beyond there." Sometimes, country-folk make you feel as if your ‘many’ miles are no great accomplishment.

Cotswolds, with its around-the-next-corner surprises, the fresh air that smells of sheep and hawthorn, the daffodils, the farmers, the cheerful voices of the B&B land lords and ladies, seems like a walk back in time, which still preserves the old English ways.

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