A Cotswold Tour

I'm a little behind on my blogging, but I definitely needed to put down my thoughts about life in Bath recently. My goal is to catch up before I go on a fresh set of adventures this weekend, and we'll see how that goes.

One of the great parts of the program I'm on is that they run some day trips and other socials for all of us to enjoy! For instance, as part of our orientation, we went to Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Lacock. On February 21, we spent the day in the Cotswold, a famous, picturesque, historic region of the country. The bus pulled up at a quarter to nine, and we piled on, wearing our Wellies (short for Wellingtons, a famous brand of rain boots) and carrying extra shoes. As with our first day out, Andrew Butterworth narrated the start of our journey, explaining some of the landmarks we would be passing. He had a particular affinity for the names of the areas we passed, recounting the stories behind a few of his favorites.

Our first stop of the day was Broadway, a quaint little town famous for its Broadway Tower. Originally built by a local lord for when he wanted to invite friends over for tea, four different counties can be seen from the top. After we spent a few minutes checking out the view, we began to hike down the Cotswold way. Though the full path is about 110 miles long, we only took on a two-mile stretch of it, which crossed muddy fields and an enclosure filled with sheep. The last field led us to a little back street in the town, which we followed back to the bus. As we got ready to board, we lined up and slipped our feet halfway out of our boots so we could step right out when we reached the bus entrance. Our boots had been so covered in mud that we surely would have ended up tracking massive quantities of muck through the bus otherwise.

As we traded our Wellies for other shoes - in my case sneakers - the bus brought us to a nearby town for lunch. Amy, Chelsi, Madeline, Megan and I decided to grab sandwiches and walk around a bit. We ended up stumbling on a little tea room, where we drank hot chocolate with an abundance of marshmallows and whipped cream. We finished up just in time to meet the rest of the group back at the bus for our third and final stop of the day, Painswick.

In Painswick, we spent the rest of our afternoon walking through the Rococo gardens and admiring the snowdrops. We maneuvered through the 250th anniversary maze, which you could see in full from a hill overlooking it. From this vantage, we guided some of the other students through the same paths we had taken. We ended the afternoon with a cup of tea and a slice of cake (mine was lemon raspberry) before heading home on the bus. Overall, a very successful day :)

Cheers!