AAAAAAAAAAAA
THE COTSWOLDS
AAAAAAAAAAAA



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. 
 
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