A trip through the Cotswolds

A word of warning: I have a feeling that most of my posts from here on out are going to have a ton of pictures, like this one does. Note that these posts are more for my record keeping than anything else.

Our trip last Saturday was a nice drive through a few Cotswold villages. We started early enough to beat most of the tourists in the first two villages, but the rest were pretty overrun with people. Even so, it was a beautiful trip.

We've seen a lot of the tall stacks of hay in fields, but with the narrow roads, we've never had anywhere to pull over and snap pictures. We took advantage of no other cars on the roads this morning...

Driving through the countryside...
Our first stop was Lower Slaughter (my favorite village). It is much smaller than the rest, with a foot-deep river running through the middle of town. It was very charming!

Each village, no matter how small, has it's own church. This just goes to show how wealthy these villages were back in the day because of the wool trade.

The river running through town...

The Cotswolds are famous for the golden stone that all the houses are built from. They also have slate roofs that are pretty cool.

Instead of driving on the main roads, we decided to just follow some country roads and see where they took us. We ended up in a tiny village called Asthall where we happened upon a cricket match. We stayed and watched for a while, trying to figure out how the game is played. We're still thoroughly confused.

This is Bourton-on-the-water. It also had a stream running through it, but it was much more touristy. We sat down for hot chocolate, scones and clotted cream and enjoyed the views.

Next up was Burford which had an amazing church.

This building was next to the church and was where the poor stayed. Notice that the doors of many of the homes are quite small (maybe just 5 1/2 feet)

The busy High Street in Burford...

It's fun having so many beautiful villages so close by.