After a rather disappointing breakfast (for me, not for the husband) at The Fleece in Witney, we proceeded to drive towards Burford – our first official Cotswold town stop in this holiday. I’ve been there before in 2012 when I first came to London as a tourist. I joined a busload of people then for a Cotswold day tour and fell in love with this region completely.
Although the constrained time for a visit in each town was quite disheartening for me, I still enjoyed it but I promised myself that I’ll go back on my own so I could explore it as much as I’d love to.
Fast forward eight years later and I’m back! Finally! It was so busy this time around though, traffic of both vehicles and people was quite heavy on the High Street. We’re still trying to observe social distancing rules but it was quite hard to do it there. I was surprised that the Greek Mister went with me for a walk around town because he hates crowds more than I do.
The main street is lined with lots of shops, restaurants and pubs and this is where most of the people were. I decided to walk all the way to the top of the hill to get away from the crowd, something that I wasn’t able to do when I visited Burford the first time.
As I reached the area where the old cottages were and looked back at the main street, I was greeted with an amazing view – the gentle slope of the hill gave a spectacular bird’s eye view of the village to the open countryside. A very instagrammable landscape! 🙂
Still trying to avoid the crowd, we explored some of the side streets and found hidden gems. Burford was a very wealthy wool town which is quite evident in the Tudor buildings that surround you. The beautiful cottages were so pleasing to the eyes but then as I walk on further and discover hidden gardens, I’d squeal more in delight! How magical would it be to live in a place like this? (Although in reality I don’t think I’d want to live in centuries-old buildings, imagine how much maintenance that would cost? Lol)
I planned to have a stop at one of the pubs in Burford for a drink but since we’ve just had our breakfast then, the Greek Mister wasn’t really up for it specially since he was already getting annoyed with the crowd. After a few more photos, we started walking back to the car park but not without stopping at Burford Parish Church of St. John the Baptist. The beautiful Anglican church is one of the Top 10 Visited Churches in the country and was built in the 15th century. As with all the Medieval churches that we’ve visited at least, a graveyard surrounds the church with some tombstones dating back to the 1500’s.
While walking around the graveyard looking at tombstones, the Greek Mister confidently blurted out: “See? Women live longer than men. That’s because men die from stress from too much bollocking around by their wives.” Disclaimer: No husband was harmed during this walk.
Note: There is a large free car park at the lower end of the town by the river Windrush. I believe the postcode for the car park is OX18 4DN but the town itself is very well-marked and you can just follow the parking sign as soon as you enter.
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have you visited them all? it seems so