The Cotswolds, England — Bella Via Travels
England
The Cotswolds
Honey stone and rolling hills
The Cotswolds is the England of the imagination — a landscape of honey-coloured stone villages, rolling hills and country house hotels that has been drawing visitors since the Arts and Crafts movement discovered it in the late nineteenth century.
Bourton-on-the-Water, Burford, Chipping Campden, Bibury, Stow-on-the-Wold — the villages of the Cotswolds are among the most beautiful in England, each one built from the same warm limestone that gives the landscape its particular quality of light. The Cotswold Way, a 102-mile walking trail from Chipping Campden to Bath, passes through the finest of them.
The country house hotels of the Cotswolds are among the finest in England — Buckland Manor, Barnsley House, the Lygon Arms and the Lords of the Manor are all expressions of a hospitality culture that takes the pleasures of the table and the garden seriously. The food markets of Stroud and Cirencester are among the finest in the country.
Bath, at the southern end of the Cotswolds, is the finest Georgian city in England — a UNESCO World Heritage city of extraordinary completeness, with the Roman Baths, the Royal Crescent and the Pump Room all within walking distance of each other. Bella Via designs Cotswolds itineraries that combine the villages with the country houses and the city of Bath.
“Bibury on a May morning, with the Arlington Row reflected in the Coln and the ducks on the water — it is the England that stays with you longest.”
What to Expect
The Bella Via Experience in The Cotswolds
Chipping Campden
The finest market town in the Cotswolds — a High Street of honey-coloured stone buildings, with the Cotswold Way beginning at its northern end.
Bibury
The most photographed village in England — Arlington Row, a terrace of seventeenth-century weavers' cottages reflected in the River Coln.
Bath
A UNESCO World Heritage city of Georgian architecture — the Roman Baths, the Royal Crescent and the Pump Room, in a city of extraordinary completeness.
Cotswolds Country House Hotels
Buckland Manor, Barnsley House, the Lygon Arms — a hospitality culture that takes the pleasures of the table and the garden with the seriousness they deserve.
The Cotswolds rewards those who arrive in the right season — spring for the blossom, autumn for the light — and stay long enough to find the version of it that the guidebooks have not yet discovered.