4 Days in THE COTSWOLDS, England | Bourton On the Water, Bibury, Broadway: Full Vlog

if you ever want to feel like your home isn't good enough then why not take a trip to the cop's walls hundreds of cute english villages spread over 800 beautiful square miles make for an easy and peaceful road trip experience in this video join us as we discover where to enjoy the perfect cream tea the best villages to explore and how to easily find a hiking trail that fits your own personal stamina if you're new here then welcome we make travel movies from around the world hoping you might just find your next holiday inspiration this is suitcase monkey basically just looking at other people's homes in the cotswolds [Music] our first few stops were rather spontaneous but allowed us to stretch our legs on the way to our accommodation it was here that we started to fall in love with the officially titled cotswold stone that helps give the region its distinct look and feel over the coming days we must have eyed up hundreds of cute english homes trying to pick our favorite although considering the high presentation of every house we wondered if maybe you're banished if you can't follow the three simple rules of apparently living here one you must be an expert gardener two you have to have an excellent sense of symmetry and three you're creative enough to give your home a name that befits its beauty little acorns lavender cottage this probably means we couldn't live here since we called our home 12. [Music] [Applause] just a few minutes drive from norton village was our accommodation where we'd be staying for four wonderful nights something that wasn't quite as wonderful however was my parking yeah we've got a reservation okay thank you [Music] temple [Music] [Music] after our lovely hosts greeted us with some hot scones fresh from the oven we settled into our room and took things easy tomorrow would turn out to be our busiest day of our trip as we explored all of the must visit areas in the cotswolds we started our first full day early with an 8am breakfast and i think that now is the best time to tell you how to have the perfect full english breakfast the key ingredient is black pudding ask any british person if they like black pudding and you will have a strong answer one way or the other but in my mind if you haven't had black pudding with your full english breakfast then you haven't had a full english breakfast but it is probably best to ignore the fact that two of its main ingredients are pig's blood and fats [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] long time viewers will know that i've never used a drone before in any of my videos but that will now change so please enjoy my first attempts at some airborne videography [Music] okay so this is totally just me moving my phone around did anyone actually fall for that i do apologize this is the very cute model village which is a tiny borton on the water replica the attention to detail here is really quite something there's even a model village within the model village and within that model village is another model village it's even built using the same cotswold stone as its inspiration chieki actually came here as a child and we recreated that special moment with some success [Music] [Music] [Music] something that we kept stumbling upon were these traditional red telephone boxes that had been converted to defibrillators i later learned that this particular one in lower slaughter was actually the first in the country to be used for this purpose turning an unused kiosk into something potentially life-saving [Music] wandering around upper slaughter we stumbled on this hotel and nearing lunch time we took the opportunity to order a cream tea with this picturesque view now i'm still not sure if my jam is supposed to go on top of the cream or it's the other way around so i just always like to hedge my bets [Music] [Music] this is arlington row in byberry the most photographed street in the cotswolds originally built in the 14th century as a store selling wool it was converted to cottages 300 years later if it seems familiar to some of you it's because it's on the very first page of your british passport people do live here remember so it is a bit odd with everyone taking photos but you can actually book a stay in number 9. nosying around on their website gives you the chance to see the inside of these lovely cottages just be aware that there will be zero welcoming of dogs [Music] another quick run in the car took us to sirencester often referred to as the capital of the cotswolds this would be the only city we would be visiting so found ourselves mostly just browsing all the shops following a quick look of how much it would cost to move here we made our way home for some rest and relaxation as tomorrow we'd be embarking on our very first cotswolds hike [Music] after the fun time of sitting in every available chair in our room we had another filled day ahead of us [Music] perched upon a hill amidst 50 acres of parkland lies broadway tower this striking castle design was built two centuries ago and is the second highest point in the cotswolds giving you the chance to see 16 different counties once you've climbed to the top [Music] next we made our way to broadway this was one of my favorite villages we visited it was a lot wider and more spread out so didn't feel quite as cramped as others it was mainly one main road with a good selection of quaint little shops including this cotswold chocolate shop along with cheese and ice cream chocolate is a popular local dish and there's a number of shops around the cotswolds that specialize in each [Music] we then drove to the tiny town of blockley which is so small that it needs a slime post directing you to the only toilets in the village and although useful we'd actually come here for a very different reason there are hundreds of official hiking trails in the cotswolds and it can be quite daunting to know where to start googling around i found an app called all trails which was really useful to help narrow down the search you can filter by length ease and whether it loops back to the start which we needed to get back to the car and after filtering in our own preferences it was the 9 kilometer blockly to batsford circular that suited us best [Music] long before tourism wool was the primary trade for the region but these furry animals are also believed to have been how the cotswolds got its name the word wald is an old english term for hill and cots refers to the sheep enclosures scattered throughout so cot's walled literally translates to sheep enclosures on the hill needing some more garden inspiration we made a brief stop at kiffsgate court gardens a super impressive display split over multiple levels it was enough to get us thinking about our own poor excuse of a garden back home a seed was indeed planted [Music] [Laughter] [Music] castle combs beauty was the straw that broke the camel's back no longer would we live in a house called twelve no longer would we accept a fence that was blown down back in february that we just couldn't be asked to fix the expert gardening skills of these fine cotswolds folk had lit a fire within us and without any shame that we were clearly now well in our 30s we fired up the satnav and arrived at nailsworth garden center and it was here that i realized the locals secret it wasn't that they had amazing gardening skills it was that they had amazing garden centers maybe we should add a bird bath a statue that means business a bloody horse a zen bridge there's no zen without a zen bridge a lady about to eat an apple whoa hang on this was clearly destiny at the time of editing it is day one of our london garden transformation which means that in just a few short weeks we will indeed have our very own piece of the cotswolds [Music] so the first tip is around what you should be spending your time on now four days is probably the max amount of time that you'll stay here so if you only have one or two days in the cotswolds these are the places i would put at the top of the list if you have one day i think borton on the water bybre and lower and upper slaughter are perfect since they are all in close proximity broadway and castle comb were both great but are very north and very south so it really depends on what else you're doing and where else you want to go that's near from a managing expectations point of view lots of these places are simply villages and not much else is going on beyond that castle comb for example was lovely but was basically just a stretch of houses and could be done in 30 minutes so do bear that in mind if you're planning on driving an hour just to get to one destination for places such as borton and the slaughters get there as early as possible we arrived at 9am and found a parking spot fairly easily but it was full one hour later for lower slaughter i actually don't think there's any real parking to speak of so we just found some country road and then walked back we found that entering the term free parking when searching on google maps did just that so try that term instead of just parking when we planned our route i basically just looked at loads of blogs and vlogs such as this one and added places of interest to my map that was ultimately why we booked the airbnb that we did because it was literally right in the middle of everywhere that we wanted to go the room was 136 pounds per night with breakfast included and for us was perfect to be in the middle of nowhere where it was silent and peaceful i've stayed within boughton on the water before which has the benefit of feeling like it's your own village where you can take a walk for dinner or breakfast but it obviously wasn't as much of the country escape as we had this time around one thing i didn't cover from the main vlog mostly for the modern day trend of eating your food in the dark is gastropubs they are everywhere in the cotswolds and often the only type of restaurant around visit them visit often they are awesome i'm not sure if this was a one-off for us but if you're traveling during peak season i'd advise on making reservations at restaurants before you travel there especially if you need to take a drive just to get there when we called ahead to places in sirencester for example it took four different phone calls until we found somewhere with space making a reservation a few hours before should be enough but just something to keep in mind as i quickly mentioned during the vlog all cafes and shops seem to close at 5 pm with the exception of restaurants and pubs i'm not sure if that's a country thing or a pandemic thing but yeah chipping camden seemed like a lovely town but with everything shut the visit lost some of its charm and energy for transport we took a 55-minute direct train from malabone to bambury station which is the quickest way to get to the edge of the cotswolds at least from london there is then an enterprise car rental just outside the station and we drove from there i'm still not sure if that's a normal way to do it rather than just rent a car from london but since we live on the east side it means we have to drive through the city or around the m25 both of which can be a nightmare this basically meant that we only had to drive around the quieter country roads which suited us fine the car was 150 pounds for four days and 35 pounds for petrol the return train journey was 33 pounds per person but remember it's always best to book in advance for trains in the uk 12 weeks is usually the sweet spot but maybe do a cost comparison from wherever you're coming from and see what's best thanks again for watching do check out the patreon links below give this video a like subscribe for more uk content as well as travel movies from around the world until the next one thanks for watching suitcase monkey

Channel: Suitcase Monkey

Views: 682,753

Keywords: the cotswolds, cotswolds, cotswolds vlog, cotswolds england, cotswalds, cotswolds vilages, best cotswolds villages, 3 days in, travel vlog, 4 days in, 1 day, 2 days, Bourton on the water, bibury, lower slaughter, upper slaughter, broadway, broadway tower, cotswolds hike, cotswolds hacks, cotswolds manor house, chipping campden, arlington row cotswolds, arlington row, cotswolds road trip, england road trip, uk road trip, suitcase monkey, england travel vlog, cotswalds uk

Id: 2DzETRI5RIU

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020