Insight Guides (Firm) - Insight Guides: Great Breaks Cotswolds

How To Use This E-Book

Getting around the e-book

This Insight Great Breaks e-book is designed to give you inspiration and planning advice for your visit to the Cotswolds, whether you're on a relaxing weekend break or an active holiday. The guide begins with our selection of Top Attractions, and an Overview that paints the history, geography and character of the Cotswolds. The Tours give a complete guide to all the sights and areas worth visiting, with easy-to-follow maps and hand-picked places to eat, drink and shop en route. The Travel Tips are packed with information on active pursuits, themed holidays and transport, as well as specially selected accommodation to suit all tastes and budgets.

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.

Maps

All key attractions and sights in the Cotswolds are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality tour maps. Wherever you see the reference , just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images

Youll find lots of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of the Cotswolds. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.

About Insight Guides

Insight Guides have more than 40 years experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce 400 full-colour titles, in both print and digital form, covering more than 200 destinations across the globe, in a variety of formats to meet your different needs.

Insight Guides are written by local authors who use their on-the-ground experience to provide the very latest information; their local expertise is evident in the extensive historical and cultural background features. All the reviews in Insight Guides are independent; we strive to maintain an impartial view. Our reviews are carefully selected to guide to you the best places to stay and eat, so you can be confident that when we say a restaurant or hotel is special, we really mean it.

Like all Insight Guides , this e-book contains many beautiful photographs to inspire and inform your travel. We commission most of our own photography, and we strive to capture the essence of a destination using original images that you wont find anywhere else.

2014 Apa Publications (UK) Ltd

TOUR MAP

The Cotswolds Top Attractions

Here are just some of the highlights of this quintessentially English area of rural Britain, which is peppered with stone villages tucked into lush river valleys and graced with elegant, historic towns

Top Attraction 1

Gloucester (for more information, ) . Renowned for its sublime cathedral, other highlights include a fascinating waterways museum and historic docks.

APA/Lydia Evans

Top Attraction 2

Cheltenham (for more information, ). This town, which is noted for its specialist shopping, proudly shows a its Regency splendour, best seen in the Prom.

Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 3

Westonbirt, The National Arboretum (for more information, ) . The stunning arboretum was planted in the 19th century and is a celebration of trees from around the world.

Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 4

Cirencester (for more information, ). Roman settlement meets 21st-century bustling market town. Visit the museum of Roman antiquities and then hit the speciality shops.

APA/Lydia Evans

Top Attraction 5

Sudeley Castle (for more information, ) . A romantic setting for hundreds of years of history, Sudeley Castle is also renowned for its award-winning gardens.

Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 6

Snowshill Manor (for more information, ). All you could wish for from a typical Cotswold-stone manor house, surrounded by gardens inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 7

Stratford-upon-Avon (for more information, ). For lovers of all things Shakespearean, the town is a shrine to the immortal bard.

Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 8

Chipping Campden (for more information, ). This is one of the most beautiful of the Cotswold small towns, with a totally unspoilt high street.

APA/Lydia Evans

Top Attraction 9

The Slaughters (for more information, ). These two idyllic Cotswold villages are almost too beautiful to be true, pure architectural and rural bliss.

Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications

Top Attraction 10

The Cotswold Way (for more information, ). Stretching 102 miles (164km) along the Cotswold escarpment, this longdistance footpath can be joined at several points along the way.

APA/Lydia Evans

Overview: Cotswolds Rugged Harmony

To many people, the Cotswolds is the essence of England, a place where they would love to live if not immediately, then certainly when they retire

Rolling Cotswold landscape.

Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications

Here in the Cotswolds the hills are high and wild, but rarely bleak, and simple stone cottages combine with church, manor house and tithe barn to create a picture of timeless beauty. Stone here is plentiful and it is this stone that gives the region its character, creating a harmonious landscape of fields bounded by drystone walls, churches with majestic towers, opulent town houses, stately homes and humble cottages with lichen-patched walls beneath steeply pitched roofs of limestone tile.