Driving through England we take the motorway, speeding past Stratford, cruising towards Oxford, the windows half down to off-set the blistering late summer heat.
"I think we should stop," says my wife. But she didn't mean for a rest at the upcoming services. "Let's break our journey in the Cotswolds. For nostalgia's sake." She smiles.
My wife, and the Cotswolds - for different reasons - should not be resisted. Soon we are snaking down narrower roads, finding a bed for a couple of nights, my wife anticipating the pleasures of an evening on the terrace of a honeyed Cotswolds pub, doing justice to local lamb, imbibing draught cider.
If you want to preserve your nostalgia in aspic, come this month or next when the golden light is as mellow as the mood. You must have a car - summer parking, an annual nightmare, clogging villages and towns designed for hay carts, becomes, in autumn, almost a breeze.
So here we are, on another nostalgia trail, looking for architectural gems, good food and history, basking in sunshine. Already with breakfast under our belts, we drive away carefully, and early, following back roads through chocolate-box villages of thatch and tumbledown churches, making sure we beat the later busier traffic before we reach the honeypot hot spots.
The Cotsworlds stretch across parts of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and the gently undulating wolds, sometimes stippled by grazing sheep, exude a mesmerising tranquility. We pass mansions set among chestnut groves, churches weatherworn by antiquity, lych gates, alms houses. A distance away, a kite ascends on a thermal somewhere near Bourton-on-the-Water, a village resembling a Cotswold theme park, so unfeasibly photogenic you check your pulse to make sure you're not dead. "Gone for a Bourton," jokes my wife.
Bourton's model railway was once a sure-fire lure for our children. Now it ignores us, as does the attraction of the maze and the even the motor museum. More seductive is the simplicity and layout of the village, its series of bridges spanning the soft flowing River Eye. We drive in parallel with the river, upstream to Upper and Lower Slaughter. You come across these tiny twin villages staring back at you from postcards all over the Cotswolds, the essence of charm.
We head by foot along the bridleway from the Slaughters into the cloak of morning silence interrupted only by birdsong, and come, after roughly 20 minutes, back into Bourton. There we pause, catch our breath and duly return to the just reward of tea and a scone in the little teashop at Lower Slaughter, by the Manor.
My wife, protesting she is missing half the scenery, dumps the map and we drive, using fingerpost signs on a mystery tour towards Wyck Rissington, Upper Rissington, Great Barrington and Taynton, emerging at Burford, a long-streeted hillside town, with Georgian and Elizabethan architecture. After lunch we walk downhill to the River Windrush and the medieval Church of St John The Baptist, one of the prettiest churches in England.
In such pleasant weather, and free of crowds, the mood in the Cotswolds is soporific. The key to convenience and relaxation is to base yourself at its heart. We chose Stow-on-the-Wold. On our second day, we toured Stow itself.
This hilltop town bestrides the Fosse Way (an old Roman road) and, in 1645, during the English Civil War, was a magnet for trouble when Cromwell's roundheads came up Sheep Hill. It was not a social call.
After lunch, we cross the green where wooden stocks, once used as a punishment for medieval miscreants, still stand. 'Would you rather have that than an Asbo?' enquires my wife, but I am distracted by a nearby huddle of pensioners smoking cigarettes with the intensity of lab rats.
"Give them a lift. Take them somewhere to chill," my wife suggests. But we go alone, to Chastleton House a lovely Jacobean gem near Moreton-in-Marsh. There we take tea and watch the sun drop and plan to finish our trip at Broadway, a favourite village (not just for its bookshops but for the food they serve at the Swan). "Ah … What memories," sighs my wife. "It's where you first played the didgeridoo …" I reply: "Please don't remind me." But she does.
TRAVEL NOTES
Where to stay
Number Four at Stow has double rooms, including a full breakfast and parking, from £130 per night based on two sharing. Visit www.hotelnumberfour.com.
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