Travel: Weekend in the Cotswolds (Winchcombe)

In early May, I spent a fabulous long weekend in the Cotswolds with my old uni friends. I was at uni with them in Preston (University of Central Lancashire) from 1991-1993. I hadn’t seen them since 2019, but everything all just slots back into place after about five minutes. Given that we all studied very different subjects (at the time I was studying a combined honours of Design History, Visual Studies and English Literature) it is funny how we have all ended up with careers in IT!

The AirBNB that was chosen was just outside of Winchcombe and was a little stone cottage making up part of a series of what would probably have originally been farm buildings. 

The garden was a little paradise of a traditional cottage garden with a mix of flowers, fruit and vegetables - I had a severe case of rhubarb envy.

We had a few “wildlife” experiences whilst we were there: 1) a deer jumped right out at us on our walk to the pub; 2) we encountered what we thought was a dead rabbit, but was actually still alive - luckily a local carried him back to his house (well I’m not contemplating the other option that the local might have done); 3) finally we found a lamb with a broken leg so had to notify the farmer.

There were some great walks right from the doorstep. One of them took us to Belas Knap Long Barrow (Neolithic). The walk was part of the Cotswold Way. There was absolutely loads of wild garlic growing and the area looked clean so we picked some leaves and mixed them rocket in a salad with our pizza.

Another walk took us onto Cleeve Hill, past the memorial tree and on to the Cleeve Hill golf club for a refreshing drink before the hot walk home.

It’s always such a tonic spending time with really good friends.

Love Mrs Jones x