The Cotswolds region is located in south central England, west of Oxford. It was the centre of the wool-trade at its height, and the resulting wealth paid for the construction of lovely cottages built of honey-coloured stone, topped with thatch roofs, and surrounded by flowers.
I'm going to offer these
without
commentary, since I found the Cotswolds pretty but not particularly
interesting.
Part of the problem is that in their current incarnation they seem to
exist
entirely as a place for tourists to visit. As the name suggests,
Stow-on-the-Water in Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock is
geographically
a combination of Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water. The
latter
may also have inspired the use of Bourton as the name of the pastoral
family
estate in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.
Burford
Broadway
Stow-on-the-Wold
Bourton-on-the-Water
Bourton-on-the-Water was
slightly
more exciting than the other villages we visited due to its river
(which
does not, however, justify the village's claim to be the "Venice of the
Cotswolds"). The bridge in the photo dates to the eighteenth
century.
The river is only about six inches deep, and every year the local
football
team plays a match in the water.
J Proceed
to Hampshire