Its been nearly month we've been in UK and had already missed out on two Indian holidays. So when we came to know that August 25th is a bank holiday in UK, we decided visit some good place for the long weekend (In UK 25th of May and 25th of August are two national holidays even though there are no festivals associated with these days). During a casual conversation with our colleagues here, one of them suggested to visit "The Cotswold" instead of any other major tourists attractions in UK as they would be too crowded and expensive during the August bank holiday weekend.(Edinburgh, Scotland celebrates a famous carnival during the month of August, hence almost all major cities in Scotland are crowded in the month of August, Cardiff again is a major tourist attraction during this month as this was the start of the Summer vacation in UK).
We hadn't heard anything about Cotswold(This place was never mentioned in any of the conversation with our colleagues during a our last visit to the UK). So we really didn't know what to expect of the place and what to plan. On some analysis that my wife did on the Internet, we came to know that Cotswold is a range of hills in West-Central England. This area has been designated by UK Government as an "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty". The place is also unique for a kind of oolitic limestone known as Cotswold stone which is quarried in many places in the Cotswold hills. This stone is used to build most of the houses around the Cotswold area. They have a unique "honey" or "golden" colour. Almost all buildings in Oxford, Cheltenham etc have houses built with stones of this colour.
After many days of confusing over the places to visit within Cotswold and the place to stay, we finally came to the conclusion of staying at Cheltenham which was easily the centre for all places to visit within The Cotswold. Not having prior driving experience on English roads forced us to travel by train(Although one of our colleagues forewarned us, that we might find it difficult seeing places without our own car). Being an Indian and having drived around in India for more than a year, We've always feared that our Indian instincts would take over when we drive in UK as well. Just for the note, 99% of the drivers in UK are very disciplined, they give preference to pedestrians, so if you are standing on the edge of the road in order to cross it, they would stop their car and allow to you to pass through (unlike in India, where you would be sweared at using un-parlimentary words!!). At all turns and round-abouts, the approaching vehicles are given preference before they turn (The generic rule is first to give way!), in India, there would have been a race to see who turns first by ensuring to block the other. Use of horn ins UK is considered to be derogatory (Don't even think about this in India!!!). People hardly use horns even at various traffic jams. All of them follow lane discipline and very rarely can you see anyone overtaking the other on a narrow road.
We had booked our accommodation at Holiday Express Inn at Cheltenham, which was reasonably priced and had good facilities. We had to take a train from Slough to Cheltenham Spa (One way ticket costs £34 per ticket, while a return ticket costs £35 pounds :-) with a validity of 1 month for the return journey). On checking the Nationalrail website (In UK there are numerous private railway companies that operate services on various routes), we came to know that a through train to Cheltenham Spa from Slough (which is about 10 miles from Loudwater) was at 8:07 am. We were targeting to catch this train on Saturday morning so that we have sufficient time for sight seeing on Saturday itself. The approximate journey time is 2:16 minutes. My wife had plans to prepare Chappathis for the journey(being pure vegetarians, we weren't convinced of finding any pure veg restaurants at Cheltenham), we decided to carry the bread toaster as well so that we can prepare our own food in case we didn't find any at Cheltenham. After an early start and some hiccups on the way, we finally did manage to board the 8:07 train, we had to changeover at Reading station to reach Cheltenham Spa. We checked hotel reservation to confirm our accommodation and enquired if we can handover our luggage under their custody (Since the check-in time was 3 pm) prior to check-in time. The hotel guys said that shouldn't be a problem. We reached Cheltenham at around 10:45 am and took a cab to the hotel( cost us £5). And surprisingly, we were allowed to check-in ahead of time at no extra cost (Since the hotel was not fully occupied). We then had our lunch of bread toasts that my wife had prepared that morning and decided to start off with sight seeing.
We first enquired the reception of the Hotel, if they can provide us with details on which are the easily accessible locations on a Saturday and to which places do we have buses on Sunday. But the blasted fellows couldn't provide us any information. He was googling from his desk and providing us information that we had already gathered on the Internet. That fool didn't even know where "Bourton-on-the-water" (one of a local attractions near Cheltenham) was. Had it been India, the guys at the reception would have provided a detailed history and geography on the local attractions!!! Frustrated we asked him to provide us directions to the Tourist Information Centre, which he thankfully did. We then tracked down the tourist information centre and queried the staff there on what would be the best to places to visit. The staff there were quiet helpful and they provided us with various pamphlets on the places to visit and even marked out few of them for us to visit, citing the days on which there is public transport to those places. By this time, it was nearly 2 pm and our next bus to the attraction "Bourton-on-the-water" was only 2:30 pm. Bourton-on-the-water, Stow-on-the-wold and Moreton-in-marsh are three classic Victorian villages (Villages by English standard!) which have numerous picturesque views. There is a bus that operates from Cheltenham which caters to all three of these villages, the frequency of this service is 1 bus every 2 hours on a weekday, there is considerably reduced service on weekends. Although these villages are a good 10 miles away from Cheltenham, they charge only £1.80 per ticket to reach Bourton, £1.90 to reach Stow and £2 to reach Moreton. There are no return tickets available on these buses ie you have to buy one-way tickets because the fares are anyway considerably lower, however these buses are not in anyway upto English standard, They seem more like their Indian counterparts, so you got to be ready for a bumpy ride on an English road :). The journey time to reach Moreton-in-marsh was nearly 1 hr, since that would reduce the time we had at our disposal for sight seeing, we decided to alight at Bourton-on-the-water and see around, which turned out to be a good decision. Bourton-on-the-water is a small village along the banks of the so called river Windrush (pictured). I call it "the so called river" because its hardly as wide as the sewage line that you cross to reach Sasi Nagar at Velachery (The velachery lake would seem like a huge sea, when compared to this river!!!). God knows what these Britishers would call one of the Indian rivers, The English rivers are tiny when compared to even the smallest of the Indian rivers!!
The entire village is located just adjacent to this and the place looks beautiful. Looks more a kind of set from some old English play. This place is used a picnic spot and is frequented by numerous people during the summer. We could see a lot of Indians too here. All of them were squatting along the banks of the river on their travel easy chairs or on the ground, with their children and pets playing on the water (The river is hardly deep, with the water reaching only till your ankles at most of the areas). Children and dogs all of them were fooling around in the water. Boys were running around, while the girls were playing with their plastic boats. There were others who were training their canine companions to retrieve sticks and balls thrown in to the water. There was also a reasonable duck population on the water, which fed on whatever was thrown in to the water by these picnickers. Here again we visited the tourist information centre to get an idea of the places to see before our last bus back to Cheltenham (at 5:15 pm). The lady there marked out the places for us. the places to visit there were
- The model village
- The Birdland
- The Auto Musuem
- The Maze
- The Perfurmery
Due to shortage of time, we restricted ourselves to three of the above places. We first visited the model village, all the while I kept wondering, why the hell does one require a model village of a village that already looks one!! The irony of this is, that within the model village, the have a model of the model village itself (So basically it goes in to an indefinite loop........).
Although the model of the model village did not look too convincing. But to the credit of the craftsmen, the model village was desgined good ("Not-too-bad" would be the term if I have to sound English). They charged as nearly £3.50 for a ticket to view the model village.The next place on the list the Birdland centre. This place boasted of a collection of a number of unique and rare birds and it also had a family of Penguins (Yes I mean it!). Apparently there are quiet a few zoos around the world which breed penguins, although this list is not complete, it still means that you dont have to go to the South pole in order to see a penguin. This got us excited and it was really nice to see these wonderful creatures. They looked pretty clean but smelled awfully bad. I guess all the pain they took in keeping themselves clean made their surroundings stink :). Jokes apart, the Birdland centre had two species of Penguins and apart from these it did have quiet unique collections of rare birds. We found numerous huge Owls as well (reminded me a lot of Harry potter's Hedgewick).
After the Birdland, we visited the maze. This basically was constructed similar to the maze shown in the final task of "Harry Potter and Goblet of fire". We were asked to look for 14 clues across a maze constructed from wooden fences thickly populated with dense creepers and using these clues we are to find out the location of a dragon fly. Getting around the maze was a real challenge, we lost our way on numerous occassions and had to tread back. We managed to locate 12 of the 14 clues available, but by the time we reached the position where we had to act upon these clues, there was a group already there who managed to track down the dragon fly. With this maze also done, we had very little time to look at the other places. So we rushed back to the bus stop lest we miss the bus. On the way back, we treated ourselves to ice creams and took a few snaps of the environment around us.
We managed to reach the bus stop before the last bus arrived, we boarded the bus and headed towards Cheltenham. We reached Cheltenham around 6 pm and then went in search of any Indian Vegetarian restaurants. As expected we couldn't find any, so we diverted our attention to look for cookies, bread, apple and tomato ketchup from Tesco. These would keep us alive the next day in case the breakfast at the Hotel was not good.In London all shops close by 7 pm, you can hardly find anything other than large supermarkets and pubs are open beyond 7 pm. We thought of shopping but this scenario was far worse at Cheltenham, this being a small city everything shutdown by 6 pm. We were planning to rent a car for the next two days thanks to the experience with the public transport, but we were in for a big disappointment, all car rental shops were closed and they remained closed for the entire weekend. Little did we know what was in store for us the remaining two days!! Anyway having faced the disappointment and with not anything else to do, we headed back to the Hotel and watched TV for sometime. The SKY network at the Hotel was able to pick one Tamil radio channel as well. We ate the chappathis that my wife had prepared that morning for dinner and went to bed early so as the start of with our second days journey of exploring the Cotswold...
to be continued....
