Despite being experienced travellers Dave made a rookie mistake this morning. While working on his Visa application for an upcoming business trip to India, he scanned his passport and promptly left it in the scanner. Not good when you need it later that day to fly to England. Oops! Thankfully Ryan was able to drive it out to the airport in time for our flight. The moral of the story is “money, tickets, passport” check just before you head out the door.
The flight to LHR was pretty uneventful until a bit of a bumpy landing. We picked up our car at Heathrow and headed out of town. This is Bartholomew, the BMW! He is quite small, which will be a benefit on tiny English roads. Dave is getting really good at adapting to driving on the left.
After sitting in some gross traffic on the M25, we made a quick stop for late lunch at the Turnpike in Yarnton, just outside of Oxford.
There are a lot of differing opinions about the etymology of the name Cotswolds. It is likely just a combination of two old English words. A ‘cot’ is a sheep enclosure and the word ‘wold’ means gentle hills, so it could be as simple as an area of gentle hills with lots of sheep around! We have only been in the country for a few hours, and have already seen many rolling hills and many sheep!
Another widely accepted idea is the area was named after Cuda, a mother goddess in Celtic mythology thought to have been worshipped in this area of England.
Our plan was to stay at one place for the entire week, but alas, karma has different plans. We figure there must be a wedding happening this weekend at Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe, as the entire site is sold out until Sunday. So we are in Chipping Norton, or Chippy, where we will stay two nights in the fantastically purple Premier Inn.
Like many of the towns in the Cotswolds, Chipping Norton grew its wealth in the wool trade. The Bliss Tweed mill just on the outskirts of town manufactured tweed cloth from locally produced wool, including a large order for khaki cloth for the British Army in WWI until it was closed in 1980.
Town Hall in Chipping Norton
Chippy phone box – there are fewer and fewer of these iconic phone booths in England! This one has no phone and the door is sealed shut!
After a quick wander in the town, we had dinner at the local pub, Bitter and Twisted. After that it was a nice stroll back to the hotel to sleep off the jet lag.
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