Restaurant discovery is the highlight of our “Ulysses” opera weekend

It’s easy to fall into thoughtless routines. We proved the point on our recent Cotswolds visit when we had our minds blown by a “new” restaurant discovery that we learned had been around for 18 years. 

We, who have spent two or three weekends a summer in Stow-on-the-Wold for the past decade, had been so comfortable in our usual flight path around the market square we hadn’t ever bothered to walk a few minutes further to find greater delights.

When we travel to any foreign destination, or even a domestic one for the first time, we research restaurants and cultural must-sees. But I have been going to this part of the Cotswolds regularly for almost 30 years. I got lazy.

My punishment: imagining the years we’ve wasted on average pub dinners when we could have been eating at The Old Butchers. Now that we know better, I predict every future trip will include a meal here.

In spirit, The Old Butchers is the lovechild of a French bistro and a cosy British country pub, taken under the wing of a godparent who owns a winery. It has all the attributes I look for in a perfect local restaurant. It’s family-owned and run, with the head chef in the kitchen and firmly in charge. The menu changes regularly based on seasonal availability. There’s a fabulous wine list, a comfortable, homey atmosphere and an informed, friendly staff that can give you insight into everything on the menu and match wines without fuss. Prices are excellent value for money. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that head chef Pete Robinson is a veteran of foodie favourites Tresanton and Bibendum and that his wife Louise has been managing restaurants since she was 18. Including doing an exemplary job with this one. No surprise that the place has a “plate” listing in the coveted Michelin Guide. (One step below “star” level.)

Our introduction to this Cotswold wonder started with a tuna tartare for one and deep-fried courgette flowers on fresh seasonal pesto for the other. We couldn’t agree who had won that round of ordering. Both combined fresh, robust flavours with simple but elegant presentation. That courgette dish can be tough to find done well outside of Italy, especially when a whole, tiny courgette is included along with the bloom. It’s extremely easy to overcook the flower while leaving the veg far too al dente. This was spot on.

No contest who won the mains selection, since we shared a whole Cornish turbot. Often called the “king of fish”, beloved by epicureans since the time of the Ancient Romans, turbot is extremely expensive and very easy to overcook. Which may be why it appears so seldom on British menus; I last had it in the Basque Country. So what a delight to find it here, and done to classic perfection: grilled with orange slices slipped between slit in its skin, then served with a sauce of white wine, butter, herbs and just enough acidity to counter the rich fish. There was also a gravy boat full of addictive hollandaise sauce, a bit too much for the fish but perfect with the boiled potatoes. And to get your veg in, two kinds of cabbage: half a grilled sweetheart variety and a mound of finely-shredded Savoy cooked with hazelnuts and almonds. The unctuous ness of every bite made it clear they’d both been cooked with enough fats to counteract any health-giving properties of the simple vegetable.

The deserts on the menu looked fantastic, but we couldn’t finish the enormous feast for two, much less fit in sweets. That’s a treat to be left for next opera season, when booking The Old Butchers will be third on my list after obtaining performance tickets and accommodation.

And speaking of the opera, how was our second outing at Longborough this year?

The critics adored The Return of Ulysses. I was less convinced. This had nothing to do with Longborough’s interpretation, and everything to do with Monteverdi’s actual opera. To go with a crude description that will horrify the opera cognoscenti, there are baroque operas that have exquisite bits of music joined together by dirge-like harpsichord bits, and then there are Baroque operas that are pretty much ALL dirge like harpsichord bits. I have to put Ulysses… Which I had never seen before… Into this second category.There are no memorable bits here to request on classic FM, and nothing you will come out Tommy. Much of it is perfectly pleasant, but can also be monotonous. And a bit sleep inducing if it’s late afternoon in a very warm circus tent.



Yes, circus tent. Longborough’s plan to have an opera season whatever the changing COVID regulations meant erecting a circus tent in the grounds. An outdoor performance space provided some shelter, with highly flexible seats ready to adapt to changing regulations. Though things had started to ease, Longborough was enforcing stricter-than-necessary measures so each party sat two metres from the next and all were masked throughout.

The performers took to the challenge of working “in the round” seamlessly, with Longborough’s usual superlative levels of acting and singing. Setting the opera in an American context, with Ulysses a soldier returning from Afghanistan, the suitors as offensive rednecks and the gods as glittering rhinestone cowboys, added interest. Continuing social distancing, however, caused problems for Ulysses that we didn’t see in Die Walkure. In that earlier production of forbidden love, the inability of the actors to touch each other in life added to the tension of the drama. The climactic duet of Ulysses seemed false when a husband and wife reunited after a decade couldn’t embrace. I suspect I might have enjoyed the opera more with a more traditional staging and a more obvious happy ending with the lovers in each other’s arms.

The fact that I didn’t really warm to the opera wasn’t important. The experience of live music and performance, and returning to one of our beloved routines of the year, was a delight. By next year, let’s hope this all feels quite normal again.

History, beauty, gardens and tales of remarkable women make Sudeley Castle magic

If Broughton Castle (which I wrote about last time) is a hidden jewel in the Cotswolds, then it’s a modest ruby compared to the glittering diamond that is Sudeley Castle. Make time for both, but if you have to choose one, Sudley has more all around sex appeal.

Like Broughton, Sudeley is a Historic Houses Association (HHA) property, still privately owned and a family home, working hard in the hospitality trade to earn its maintenance. Both were proper medieval castles that evolved into grand residences. They share golden Cotswold stone, Tudor and Elizabethan architecture, storybook settings and romantic gardens. But while Broughton owes its current state of preservation to benign neglect on the part of its owners for well over a century, Sudeley is indebted to rich Victorian industrialists with an eye for history and hopes of turning new money old.

What you see today is therefore a marvellous pastiche of a Victorian country house with all of the most modern comforts, built in a tasteful historic style, inserted sensitively into ruins that now serve as a picturesque backdrop for the castle gardens. The house interiors are a real treasure trove, full of priceless collections. The Dent family had made their fortune in gloves and leather goods, and happened to be on the way up as the Walpoles of Strawberry Hill descended. Many of the most interesting and priceless objects in the Gloucestershire castle come from a massive sale of the famous Twickenham house’s contents. (You can read about my visit to Strawberry Hill here.)

Sudeley’s warm, comfortable rooms envelop you in rich wood panelling or colourful neo-Gothic wallpapers. There are plenty of overstuffed sofas, deep armchairs, and magnificent beds piled high with pillows. The most extraordinary is a four-poster, canopied mash-up of carving from both the Tudor and Stuart eras, said to have been slept in by Charles I. The Dents clearly liked their creature comforts. 

My favourite treasure inside the house was a rare, early English tapestry of such rich colours you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a Victorian copy rather than the 16th century original.  It tells the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, but its interest lies in its borders, rich with beautiful little scenes of hunting and woodland life. You could look at it for hours.

There’s also an exceptional collection of pencil sketches of Holbein portraits, copies by one of his students but so masterful most would think they were originals. But the prize for quirkiest collection goes to a large group of wax miniature portraits in the same bedroom with that Charles I bed. You often come across one or two of these in museums like the Victoria and Albert. I think they were very fashionable for a short period of time. The wax gives the artist a chance to create a 3-D image that is spookily lifelike. There are two bookshelves stuffed with them here. It’s the biggest collection I’ve ever seen in one place. I suspect most people don’t even notice them. The room steward was so pleased that I had, she invited me step behind the rope to get a closer look. (Something more likely to happen to you in an HHA house than one managed by the National Trust.)

Many visitors will find Sudeley’s exteriors more memorable. The Dent’s decision to leave parts of the castle in ruins turns the whole site into a romantic garden folly, with plants climbing up crumbling walls and through empty windows. Courtyard gardens offer intimate spaces for quiet contemplation, while a massive Victorian-style rose garden that would be spectacular on its own is even more dramatic with the house and ruins as a backdrop. And though these days the estate is a relatively small one, the garden “borrows’ spectacular views from the lush countryside around. The pheasantry is a delightfully unexpected addition to the outdoor fun. I had no idea there were so many varieties around the world, nor that they were so spectacularly beautiful.

Ample benches and quiet corners throughout the garden invite you to linger. I spotted a fair few visitors enjoying picnics, while I settled beneath the shade of a yew hedge to try to capture some of the romance of those ruinous gardens with my fledgling watercolour skills. (This new hobby that encourages me to pause and properly look at things may be my best thing to come out of pandemic lockdowns.)

For me, unsurprisingly, the best part of Sudeley is the history. Every stately home in the country has its stories, but few outside of royal palaces have had so many kings and queens passing through, or played a role in quite so many significant events. There’s so much to tell that the family has set up a history museum in one of the towers to walk you through more than 1000 years of excitement. Displays combine waxworks, art, artefacts and video to shed light on highlights. These include the rise and fall of Richard III (history here gives weight to the argument he was a decent king set up by Henry VII and Shakespeare to be the villain), the drama of Tudor and Elizabethan times, the heroic restoration efforts of the Dents and the castle’s rebirth in recent times.

It’s the stories of the women of Sudeley that make it most special for me. High on my list of things I’d like to do in retirement is writing historical fiction about women who deserve to be better known. The women of Sudeley could be a whole series. 

We’d start with Princess Goda of England, daughter of Ethelred the Unready and the fascinating Emma of Normandy (she deserves her own novel), and sister to Edward the Confessor, last Anglo-Saxon King of England. Sudeley was a wedding gift from her father. And though she’d died by the time of the Norman Conquest, and most of her family lands were redistributed to conquering Norman knights, Sudeley somehow managed to stay in the family. History is murky on the point, but in my novel I’d have Goda … more worldly and politically adept than her brother … anticipating the trouble to come and doing a secret deal to preserve her estates for her children. 

Next comes Eleanor Talbot Boteler, a young widow of the heir to the castle who caught the eye of Edward IV. Claims that he married her, and thus that his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was illegal, precipitated the final crisis in the Wars of the Roses. Whatever the political truth, Eleanor’s story … married at 13, widowed in her early 20s, living with her father-in-law as her family lands were confiscated in a civil war, invited into a relationship with a king who could restore all, secretly married, abandoned and retired to a Carmelite nunnery … would be a great one to write.

The most fascinating and dramatic of Sudeley’s stories is Katherine Parr’s. Having been the only wife to survive Henry VIII, and widowed veteran of two arranged marriages to old men before her time as queen, Katherine followed her heart and quickly married Thomas Seymour, then owner of Sudeley. He was, and had been for some time, the love of her life. Sadly, he was also a complete bastard who made sexual advances to their ward, the young princess Elizabeth, while she was staying at Sudeley and couldn’t be bothered to attend his wife’s funeral after she died giving birth to his child. One of the most poignant displays in the exhibition is a letter from Katherine … one of the best educated and most powerful woman of her time … asking his forgiveness for writing to him more often than he’d proscribed, and begging for just a little news of his life in London. It’s heartbreaking. Thomas’ indifference left Lady Jane Grey to be Katherine’s chief mourner. She had been living with Katherine at Sudeley and would soon be on her own trajectory to tragedy.

Emma Dent’s story is, thankfully, far more cheerful. She grew up in one family of rich industrialists, married into another, and could have been a textbook example to other women of the age in how to run a great home with panache. Most of the best works of art here are thanks to her tasteful collecting. She was an avid letter writer who collected autographs of the great and good of her age; there’s a whole room with examples including letters from both Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. She oversaw the reconstruction of the chapel in the grounds which holds the tomb of Katherine Parr. (Notice the resemblance of the tomb to the Albert Memorial? The same architect, George Gilbert Scott, designed both.) Emma created those fabulously romantic gardens and was a famous hostess, deploying all the wonders of the Castle to create memorable house parties.

And we mustn’t forget the current chatelaine, Elizabeth, Lady Ashcombe, who belongs to that noteable club of American brides who have saved the aristocratic homes they married into. Unlike so many others, she didn’t do it with a massive inheritance but with determination and good business sense. When her husband died of a heart attack at just 40, she was left with two children and a crumbling castle mired in debt. Sudeley’s opening to the public, followed by its slow and steady renovation to the beautiful showcase and multi-faceted tourist destination it is today, owes a great deal to her.

Until I get a chance to write those books, your best bet for digging into the lives of those fascinating women is to get yourself to Sudeley. I’d recommend it for anyone on holiday in the Cotswolds, but its location just outside Cheltenham and near the M5 means it’s a reasonable day trip from London or many other parts of the country.

Broughton Castle shows how privately-owned houses can offer more to the serious tourist

I have been a member of the National Trust for more than 20 years. Given my passion for the history, art and architecture of England, contributing those membership fees every year is one of my ways of giving back. But there’s no denying that my interests and those of the Trust have moved apart over the years.

 

They’ve drifted ever further away from houses and history to environmentalism, “below stairs” stories, children’s activities and hosting holidays. The members’ magazine, which once I once consumed cover-to-cover, has been “popularised” to a lightweight skim. If this is what they need to do to get children and urban folk with no interest in history to support heritage, then so be it. Maybe someday, someone who came for the Easter egg hunt or a peak at Victorian kitchen equipment will thrill to Palladian architecture or the political machinations that took place in majestic halls. I will continue to give, because even light-touch heritage is better than none at all. But my expectations for what the organisation can offer me have shrunk.

Happily, I’ve discovered the Historic Houses Association to fill the spaces I’ve been missing. This organisation includes all of the blockbuster stately homes, like Chatsworth and Blenheim Palace, that are still in private ownership. But perhaps more importantly, the bulk of its members are owners of moderately-sized estates who have been valiantly keeping up the side. Few have the resources of the people who built these places. There are countless stories of remarkable innovation as families have expanded their stately home-based businesses in every way possible to keep heritage alive, both for themselves and the nation. The National Trust is in many ways a collection of the houses of people who gave up. The HHA offers up the survivors.

And in this variation, you get a very different sort of organisation. I’m guessing the HHA is a more homogenous membership than the vast Trust. Probably older, possibly better educated and certainly more focused on built heritage. The HHA unabashedly celebrates history, unashamed of the great names who lived in their houses. They don’t shy away from detailed knowledge: members are regularly invited to online lectures that dig into the history and architecture of the properties at a level that wouldn’t be out of place in a university curriculum. And yes, their somewhat more scholarly members’ magazine is something I lap up in its entirety.

The best part of HHA houses is that they are still lived in, and used for a variety of purposes. Which often makes them more interesting than the static stage sets of the National Trust. You also tend to find far more informed guides inside the houses. They’re often employees rather than volunteers, often having been associated with the house and its owners for many years, and they take their jobs seriously. I always learn new things from HHA stewards.

A glorious case in point is Broughton Castle, not far from Banbury in the Cotswolds. It is one of the most romantically picturesque stately homes in the country; a multi-gabled Medieval and Elizabethan confection of golden stone still entirely surrounded by its reflective moat. It’s at the bottom of a gentle valley, surrounded by pastures of swaying grass, sheep, and the odd, ancient oak sloping up to the treeline. It offers the instant deja vu of properties that have appeared in scores of historical films as someplace else; most notably in my awareness as Viola de Lesseps’ house in Shakespeare in Love. It has seen all of the battles and political intrigue that the word “castle” promises, though today it is a picture of sleepy peace and quiet.

The interiors are a pleasing pastiche of time periods, from medieval foundations to modern enhancements. (Another benefit of privately-owned houses: owners continue to update and add to collections for the future.) Much of its preservation is due to the fact that the family lost interest and let the place out through the late Georgian and Victorian periods; what you see now is a massive amount of sensitive restoration from the early 20th century. (In this respect it’s a lot like the equally magical Haddon Hall, another HHA member in the Peak District.) There is a delightful contrast between the great hall, where ghosts from the Wars of the Roses would feel at home, to the rooms along the upper gallery which are light, airy, and fantastically elegant. The place has been in the same family for more than 600 years, giving them the chance to collect a lot of fabulous stuff.

There are masterpieces aplenty here, from paintings and furniture to exotic porcelain and priceless hand-painted Chinese wallpaper in several bedrooms, two of which offered accommodation to visiting monarchs. But there is also quirky stuff like the oldest surviving top hat awarded in cricket for taking three consecutive wickets; an award that gave rise to the sporting term hat-trick. There’s a good collection of Civil War arms and armour, some impressive plaster ceilings and a couple of unusual English renaissance chimney pieces. The current owner, the twenty first Baron Saye and Sele, has commissioned a fantastic piece of modern woodwork as a new bed in one of the rooms with that Chinese wallpaper. You might expect a clash, but the elegant curves of the abstract frame somehow feel a fitting part of the forest through which those birds have been flying for 200 years.

The castle benefits from a particularly fascinating family full of creative and daring types. The name is Fiennes. (Technically Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes.) You might have heard of the ones who went into acting and directing. Or the famous explorer. The daughter of the house is a talented painter who’s been the official artist on multiple trips with the Prince of Wales. The current baron, now a venerable 101, helped liberate Bergen-Belsen. Those are just the living ones. 

The head of household during the Civil War had a traumatic time trying to walk a sensible centre ground, getting into trouble with both sides and spending some time incarcerated in the Tower of London before being restored to his lands and pardoned by Charles II. He marked England’s eventual return to peace by redecorating the family sitting room behind the great hall … one of the castle’s most magnificent yet comfortable spaces, full of light from walls of Elizabethan windows on three sides … with sumptuous panelling and and interior porch with fanciful Jacobean pinnacles. (Top photo) The Latin motto above the door translates as “There is no pleasure in the memory of the past.” A fitting memorial for a soldier who wanted to put the past to bed and move on.

In addition to politicians, and the famous cricketer who won the hat, there are also a fair few writers in the family. Most notable to people who have studied English history is Celia Fiennes, Who explored England on horseback in the mid 18th century… a kind of tourism that didn’t exist for anyone at the time, much less women… and wrote a bestselling book about it.

The house tour exits into one of most romantic rose gardens I have ever seen, built within ruined walls with the castle looming above it and the moat glittering through old, empty windows. Seen in high season for the roses, it’s a bit like a Chelsea Flower Show garden; it seems too perfect to be real. This is a place for lingering, whether in the gardens, the tea shop in the building next to the guard tower through which you entered or out in the park looking back at the castle. I spent an hour in the shade of a gnarled oak tree trying … unsuccessfully … to capture the beauty of the scene in a watercolour. Fortunately, when it comes to this hobby it’s the doing rather than the result that brings joy.

Broughton would make few people’s Top 10 lists of attractions in the Cotswolds. It probably should. It’s a hidden gem that will warm the heart of anyone who loves the romance of English history. And if you want to get in for free, all you have to do is join the HHA.

A disappointing Hampton Court show prompts me to seek rose Mecca (and Arts & Crafts heaven)

Before I headed to the Cotswolds, I started my holiday at the Hampton Court Garden Festival. It was, to be honest, deeply inferior to past years. But it was so exciting to actual be at an annual milestone after 16 months of COVID cancellations ... and to be out in a crowd (limited to the fully vaccinated) ... that I could forgive its shortcomings.

Those included a decline in show gardens, sponsors and vendors. For the first time there were open plots where organisers obviously hadn't been able to sell space. The gardens themselves were bland in their near-uniformity. Everyone varied on the same themes: save the planet, and stay calm during a pandemic. The result was a lot of of shady spots for relaxation, outdoor kitchens, and naturalistic planting verging on the unkempt.

Only two gardens even inspired me to take out my camera. Tom Stewart-Smiths meadow planting gives a vision of the future of the UK that looks surprisingly like a field in central Missouri on a good day. I loved it, but even with climate change I'm sceptical about many of these heat-lovers would survive on our shores. The second I photographed for pure shock value. 

Its visual hook was an airplane crashed into a wheat field (representing genetically-modified monocultures) with luggage spilling from its severed tail. In case you missed the point, the "airline" branding was Homo Sapiens. Through the plane's shattered

cockpit you could see a small collection of plants that had survived multiple extinction events.  At the time I had a viscerally negative reaction, believing the wrecked plane was in spectacularly bad taste, but a week later it's the main thing I remember about this year's event. If a show garden is meant to get a message across, there’s probably never been better.

Amongst the vendors not attending was flower show stalwart David Austin Roses. Instead of their usual booth manned with staff ready to offer copious advice and sell you the year's latest varieties, they planted a curved bed of roses around some benches, put up labels with their flower show offer, and stayed home. Ironically, this decision on their part triggered the first day of holiday sightseeing on mine.

I had always wanted to get to their headquarters just north of Birmingham. It was rose season. From my Cotswolds starting point I was already halfway there. What the hell.

David Austin started selling his specially-bred roses in the 1960s and by his death in 2018 had become the leading light of the modern Rose world. His special genius was for combining the colours, shapes, and sense of old-fashioned roses with the repeat flowering of new ones. Today, I doubt there is a major garden anywhere in the world that doesn’t feature his creations. If gardening were a religion ... and for many, it certainly is ... then this might be its Mecca.


The gardens here are essentially the company showroom, demonstrating what more than five decades of patented roses look like in their full maturity. Breathtaking is a word that's lost its impact from overuse, but it's appropriate here. The beauty of this place in the middle of rose season is so overwhelming I was, briefly, physically overcome and needed to sit down to recover.

You start off on a patio full of enormous pots showing off the latest introductions. Beyond is the vast Long Garden, a connecting network of pergolas stretching more than 100 metres with three wide aisles, all packed with different roses. It's the biggest assemblage of roses I've ever seen in one garden. And I've seen a lot of gardens. Bushes, ramblers and climbers all jostle for your attention as they tumble together in a riot of colour. If the festive assault on your eyes isn't enough to overwhelm you, the scent will finish you off. It's incredible.

There are three walled gardens off this long walk, each walled to concentrate the aromas further. The Victorian Garden is circular, inviting you to explore different varieties in a contemplative spiral. The Lion Garden, named for a large sculpture at one end, is the most varied of the planting schemes with a mix of species alongside the headliners. The Renaissance Garden is the one I would most likely transplant to my own home, should I win lottery. A long, still pool runs from the main entrance to an Italian-style loggia. On either side of the water are aisles framed with undulating box hedges from which roses spill. A pergola runs down one side. Combined with the framing walls and the back of the loggia, it’s an exceptional stage for climbers. Here, as in the Long Garden, roses bloom at every level your eye rests upon, overwhelming both eyes and nose.

There are plenty of benches throughout for lingering appreciation. If you need more significant sustenance there is a lovely little café surrounded by more roses and staffed by locals who radiate pride in their garden. They serve simple country fair done well. Soup, sandwiches and cakes, all obviously handmade rather than from an industrial kitchen.

The purpose of these gardens is, of course, to sell roses, and this is one of the world's better examples of exiting through the gift shop. Austin’s greatest hits are organised by type in an enormous outdoor garden centre. I have bought many of these roses from garden centres and have been delighted, but the quality here is even better. I doubt that the “Boscobel” I purchased will ever look as good as it did in its pot at its birthplace. These gardens aren’t just special because of the roses, but because of the care and knowledge of the experts who tend them. Every spent bloom is dead-headed, soil beneath is turned gently, branches are pruned in the optimum spots and I’m sure every bit of feeding is done to its proper schedule. I must do better.

If you are making a long drive to get to David Austin’s, you may want to expand your day with a visit to a fascinating National Trust property that is only 20 minutes down the road on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. Wightwick Manor is probably the most beautiful of the small handful of Arts and Crafts houses on the heritage circuit. 

That it has few peers is probably down to a visceral hatred of Victorian art and architecture that ran through much of the 20th century. I admit many Victorian interiors can be gloomy and overwhelming but Arts and Crafts, embraced by industrialists who wanted to be seen as edgy, intellectual non-traditionalists, is different. The combination of William Morris, his colleagues in the decorative arts and the pre-Raphaelite painters brings a lightness of touch, a confidence with colour and a devotion to romance and comfort. My instinctive reaction in an Arts and Crafts house is to snuggle on a sofa with a great book. (To match the environment, probably something by Oscar Wilde.) Here, I could do so for a very long time.

Though Wightwick was built with all of the “mod cons” available in 1887 (electricity, central heating, proper bathrooms), it is meant to feel like a fairy tale bower. William Morris’s lush floral wallpaper surrounds you, and there are several original drawings from his tapestries.

His fabrics beckon you onto overstuffed chairs and sofas. Stained glass windows and de Morgan tiles around fireplaces send shards of jewel-toned light across rooms. One of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the country brings those fairytales to life on the walls. One of the unique elements of Wightwick is its large collection of female Pre-Raphaelite artists, and these days they really celebrate that part of the collection. On my visit the gallery in one of the outbuildings was dedicated to the little-known wife of William Morgan, Evelyn, who was an accomplished artist whose work inspired her husband’s pottery.

Outside, the house is all romantic gables, half timber and and mellow brickwork. Master craftsmen were as much at work here as inside, evident in carved animals and decorative bits that adorn the timbers. 

There are some pretty rose gardens here. Though they pale in comparison to David Austin’s.

The staff inside the house were both chattier, and more knowledgeable, than your usual National Trust volunteers. Maybe it’s the extra time they’ve had in lockdown, or maybe just a deep pride in this region that isn’t really on the tourist track. If you are anywhere near here, especially in rose season, it is worth a detour. Both these sites are jewels that deserve to be better known.

A week of solitary sightseeing in the Cotswolds takes me back to my English roots

The United Kingdom is caught in the grip of a collective case of cabin fever.

Last summer, everyone embraced “staycations” with a Blitz spirit. We were all doing our bit in the battle against the pandemic, felt virtuous injecting some cash into local attractions deprived of foreign tourism, and actually had a bit of fun discovering British locations that could rival continental hot spots.

More than 15 months after the first restrictions, patience is running out. One summer of local holidays was charming, but nobody expected a second. The closer summer came, the more confused the travel picture grew as regulations shifted back and forth with little notice. The only dependable option is getting in your car and staying local again, if you can manage to stay clear of the NHS’ increasingly notorious Test and Trace app surprising you with your own personal quarantine. (As I write, the app had pinged half a million people in just one week, with rising numbers ignoring its advice because the overwhelming majority of the population is now fully vaccinated and precautions are starting to feel pointlessly excessive.) Every news broadcast features disgruntled holidaymakers, British-owned businesses on the continent facing bankruptcy without this summer season to refill their coffers, or frustrated owners unable to get to holiday homes in France and Spain.

The Bencards aren’t attempting to break our island shackles until September (and I have no real confidence that trip will take place). For a much-needed summer pause, we headed for the Cotswolds.

Regular readers will know this is familiar territory for BencardsBites. We spend at least two weekends a year at the Longborough Festival Opera near Stow-on-the-Wold. Thanks to both being able to work remotely, we thought we would mix things up for our second opera of the year by decamping to Stow for a whole week. We’d work during the day, enjoy someplace different in the evenings, and get a feel for what living in the Cotswolds might be like. (One of my long list of retirement fantasies.)

It didn’t go quite as planned. A 10-day COVID quarantine as June turned to July knocked me out of my annual girls’ trip and forced my husband to reschedule some important appointments into the week scheduled for our Stow residency. The result: I took the whole week off with the unused girls’ trip time, but was on my own for the first four days and solo sightseeing for the whole week.

It was an unexpectedly pleasant trip down memory lane. On my earliest expat assignments in England, any moment I wasn’t working or sleeping I was exploring on my own. Unencumbered by the interests of others I threw myself into historic sites and wandered miles down country lanes in search of some much-lauded view or quirky ruin. Often the only conversation I had across a whole weekend was with guides in historic houses about some interesting artefact or architectural nuance. And that’s exactly how I spent much of my week.

With no-one’s patience to try but my own, I could drive almost two hours just to see one garden. (Of that spectacular visit to David Austin’s headquarters, stay tuned for my next article.) I could indulge my love of the Arts and Crafts movement with a lingering visit to Wightwick Manor and savour every layer of history at the beautifully curated Sudeley Castle. Many might find Broughton Castle too similar to do in the same week, but not me! I could take the long and winding route to wherever I was heading, down tiny lanes, regularly pulling over to take in a view or let traffic that actually needed to be somewhere hurry by. I could linger unbothered in the seconds area at Whichford Pottery, debating how big a flaw I was ready to accept in exchange for a proportionate discount. (With no one to question whether or not I actually needed new pots.)

One of the great delights of this trip was aimlessly strolling around some of the smaller, particularly picturesque villages. Places like Bibury, Upper and Lower Slaugher, Great Tew and Lower Swell have made the Cotswolds famous the world over. Golden-walled, slate-roofed, rose-covered cottages of mellow antiquity gather around tiny village greens or line little streams crossed by ancient stone footbridges. Wrought iron gates offer views of  gabled and pinnacled manor houses that might have welcomed Elizabeth I. Fields of golden wheat, hello rape, blue flax, sheep and cows extend up the encircling hillsides. 

For years, these little slices of heaven have been partially destroyed by the worshippers who travel here to drink in their atmosphere. Rural charm is hard to preserve in the face of busloads of tourists alighting to photograph every angle and stick their noses against people’s windows. At their worst, foreign crowds can make these places feel more like the British pavilion at Epcot real communities. This summer, with foreigners mostly absent, these idyllic villages retained their original charm. And I made the most of it, strolling slowly to take in architectural details and picturesque scenes, or finding a comfortable spot from which to draw or watercolour for an hour or two. (My attempt at the famous row of cottages in Bibury called Arlington Row is below.)

I even indulged in the takeaway curry that used to be my staple on those long-ago sightseeing weekends. Now that I am married to a man who is allergic to tomato and doesn’t like spicy food, an Indian takeaway has become a rare and solitary indulgence. A Sunday-night order from Stow-on-the-Wold’s excellent Prince of India kept me going until the husband’s arrival Wednesday.

While I have no desire to return permanently to the solitary travels of my 30s, I enjoyed the self-indulgence of my week enormously. You, dear reader, can look forward to a stream of articles in coming weeks as a result.

Our home in Stow-on-the-Wold was called The Little House, and little it was. In square footage, it was about half the size of the flat that we rented at The Unicorn up the street when we came up for Wagner last month. Just a small kitchen, sitting room and loo downstairs, and a snug double, single and bathroom up. Basic rather than luxurious, but excellent value for money at £540 for an entire week in contrast to around £300 for two nights at the  boutique hotels we’ve typically used for weekends.

The Little House is in the lower part of Stow-on-the-Wold, just up a lane from The Bell pub. It was only a few hundred yards beyond the main circuit most tourists take around the little market town, and yet the “neighbourhood” felt more local. It was quieter, parking was easier, we discovered new restaurants and pubs, yet we were still within easy walking distance of all of our regular favourites.

Despite my celebration above of the lack of foreign tourists, I am happy to report that those visitors … particularly Americans … are missed by the hospitality industry. In several conversations with locals I heard the same refrain. Local tourists are different. It’s not as simple as Brits spending less money than the foreigners. (Though I was assured most of them do.) The big differences came down to research and appreciation.  People who invest in plane tickets and spend a week or two in the country put effort into preparing for their holiday. They plan what they want to see and often read about things in advance. They research comparison sites for hotels and restaurants and generally have set their expectations accordingly. In summary, foreigners are coming for a heritage and cultural experience, while Brits are looking for new places to kick back, eat and drink. (I suspect what heritage sites are losing in revenues, pubs are making up.) I was both delighted and saddened when one of the guides at Sudeley Castle volunteered that the Americans who visit almost always have a better grasp of British history than the natives wandering through at the moment.

There’s plenty of history to come. And gardens. And one particularly fine new restaurant tip. Read on…