The Cotswolds Retreat

The Cotswolds is the England of the imagination — a landscape of honey-coloured limestone villages, ancient market towns, hedgerow-lined lanes, Norman churches and country manor houses that appears to have stepped directly from the pages of a P.G. Wodehouse novel, completely unchanged from the early 20th century. Our Cotswolds Retreat is the perfect way to immerse yourself in England's most celebrated countryside.

Chipping Campden, at the northern tip of the Cotswolds escarpment, is widely considered the finest market town in England — a single, perfectly preserved high street of honey-stone buildings from the 14th to 17th centuries, the result of wealth generated by the medieval wool trade. Your expert guide brings the fascinating history of the Cotswold wool merchants to vivid life.

Bibury, described by William Morris as "the most beautiful village in England", contains Arlington Row — a terrace of 17th century former weavers' cottages beside a rushing stream and a meadow of wildflowers that is the most photographed scene in the English countryside, appearing on the British passport. The village has barely changed in 300 years.

A gentle guided countryside walk through the rolling Cotswold hills, along footpaths between the villages, offers the perfect way to experience the landscape at its own pace — through meadows filled with wildflowers in season, past dry-stone walls built without mortar and standing for centuries, and through ancient woodland. Your boutique accommodation in a converted village inn provides the ideal base for each evening: log fires, local ales, and the deep silence of the English countryside at night.