Cotswolds After Hours

The Cotswolds region of England is “AONB”, which means Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is quaint English countryside with rolling hills, beautiful gardens, and postcard-perfect villages. It is so pretty that it is capable of satisfying your every romantic need or nostalgia for fairy tales. Walking through some of the villages, it is very easy to imagine yourself being in a movie set of a Jane Austen’s or Charles Dickens’ novel, and the best part is that it is not a movie set or a cupboard decoration, it is all real. It helped that we visited Cotswolds after hours when all tourist buses were gone. Unfortunately, we had only one evening for sightseeing, which amounted to visiting only three villages: Burford, Bibury and Bourton-on-the-Water.

Arlington Row, Bibury, was build in the 14th century as a wool store and converted to cottages in the 17th century. It is said to be the most photographed street in Cotswolds and pictured on the inner cover of the British passports.

At the time we got there, after 7pm, the tourists were all gone and we had the place mostly for ourselves (there was a wedding party that interrupted our photo session). It is definitely very picturesque, and we spent about an hour photographing and enjoying the scenery.

I read that Bourton-on-the-Water is packed with tourists. However, when we arrived there around 9pm, it was deserted. The village is so beautiful that is hard to believe it is real, even more so when all the people are gone.