The region is 40km wide and 145km long and spans from Bath to Stratford Upon Avon to Oxford. Every one of the dozens of villages, no matter its size, has its own personality - whether it be Castle Combe, Broadway, Stow on the Wold or Bourton On The Water.
Upper and Lower Slaughter may be small but they're quintessential Cotswolds. They're what you'd most probably think of if you closed your eyes and pictured a quaint English village. Wardens Way is a public path that leads from Lower to Upper Slaughter through a series of gates through fields beside the river. The walk passes humble cottages that highlight the typical Cotwolds design with doorways close to the footpath behind English country gardens and under thatched roofs on high gables. Multipanelled windows, flower boxes and bay windows predominate - perfect in their imperfectness. Then there's the occasional stately manor with manicured lawns behind black wrought-iron gates, with a posse of gardeners creating works of horticultural art and smooth wide hedges.
The Cotswolds is a great place to visit for amateur students of architecture and admirers of natural building materials. Some homes are very old, some very new, but all pay homage to their design heritage ... Pretty maids all in a row.
But the real beauty of the Cotswolds is that you can just stumble upon a treasure of a place. Willersey around the corner from Broadway on the way to Stratford Upon Avon wasn't on our radar to visit but was simply divine.
Today's lesson: I need to talk slower because people can't understand my accent. They mistake me for a Kiwi.
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