The second half of our holiday we spent wandering around Gloucester and the Cotswolds.
The area is at least as beautiful as Wales, though it’s a lot busier. Every valley hides another lovely town or village, though.
Wonderful medieval market towns that used to earn their money with wool. The town names amuse me so much, they almost seem like a parody of the British countryside.
Small passages between the tilting houses.
And more gorgeous churches…
Apparently the Romans quite enjoyed this region too. The limestone bedrock apparently creates a rare sort of grassland in the UK, which is probably the reason why this region has become so rich in the past. Also probably explains the flourishing medieval wool trade. Okay, true, as a Roman the weather here would desperately disappoint me, but then the fertility of the area and the outstanding natural beauty would probably make up for a lot of that.
It was fascinating to look into the past of the wool trade. We visited the so-called ‘wool churches’ (very rich churches that were paid for with the money earned in the wool trade), wool mills and of course shops! One place we really enjoyed was the Cotswold Woollen Weavers. This combination of shops, studios, museum and artizan community was very inspiring.
The gorgeous clothes were a little bit out of our price range, though….
We also visited Cooper’s Hill, where the annual cheese rolling takes place. A couple of years ago the husband decided to live up to his heritage and flung himself off this ridiculously steep hill amongst a bunch of idiot men. Managed to get down without breaking himself too badly, which is lucky for me. It must be one of those things the male gender does to weed out the silliest genes in their midst….
Also pretty bees!
Oh and last but not least – we went to a lot of pubs. Did I gush about pubs already? Pubs are awesome. Seriously, why does this never take off in the Netherlands? The food, the cider, the atmosphere, the fact that in the best pubs your dog is more welcome than you… Oh man, pubs are the epitome of gezellig. Which is probably why we don’t have them *innocent grin*
Look ancient medieval pub with ceilings lower than we were tall! So pretty.
Now I want to go back…