Cotswolds

The three of us went on an impromptu little trip to the Cotswolds this weekend. Mary's boss at the most recent internship kept on going on how lovely they were, and how easy it was to get there and see the sights, so we finally gave in. We just drove up Saturday at noon, motored around seeing the cute little villages, spent the night in an inn, motored around a bit more in the morning, and then came back home.

Most of the towns in the area developed in the 12th and 13th century as markets to support the region's wool industry. Of the towns, Chipping Campden was by far the cutest and most well-preserved. Every single building in sight is made out of local limestone, which is a kind of brownish-yellow. Lots of buildings still have thatched roofs, and there is very little recent development. It's all very cute and adorable to the point of sickness.

We did have a very nice evening in Tetbury though. We stopped off there to have dinner (lamb, of course) at a pub called the Royal Oak, and while there began to look vaguely for a place to spend the night, although since London was only two hours away we could always have returned for the night if need be. That seemed to be the case, as everything was predictably all booked for the height of the summer tourist season. The pub owner, however, heard our plight, and made a phone call to some friend who managed a pub just a block up the street. It turned out that she had a spare room that she wasn't ordinarily letting, as it needed some repairs--perfect for us, especially at only thirty pounds for the night. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying the pub, which was a rather shabby, and very local, place in an sixteenth-century stone building. Once it was closing time, and we were full of beer and lamb, the three of us squeezed into a little room upstairs, and had a lovely night's sleep.

These next few days we're lucky to have two friends from college visiting--Ruth, who had been visiting her parents in the South of France this summer, and my former Cambridge roommate Sun, who is stopping off here for a day en route to Germany. A random convergence of people, but fun.