The Cotswolds: Day 1

Over the last month we have done a lot of playing catch up with things that had been postponed due to lock down. The last of them - I think! - was a night away, using a gift voucher that R gave for Christmas 2019. Yes, that long ago!  The arrangements turned into something of a saga. We decided we would like to go to the Cotswolds - not too far from home, so no long drive, but always lovely. The first hotel we booked cancelled as they had double booked. We rebooked into a Holiday Inn near Warwick, then on Thursday night decided to look at Trip Advisor reviews. It was a good thing we did, not because there were bad reviews, but because there was a review posted the previous day complaining that a booking had been cancelled because the hotel was being used as a quarantine hotel for people flying in from red list countries. M phoned and the hotel verified this. It also turned out they did not have any record of our booking. Oops! We had booked through the voucher company, and something clearly went very wrong. 

We decided that as we had already arranged for R to have TG to stay overnight on Friday we would make a last minute booking of our own and then try to unravel the voucher mess later, and booked in to a hotel in Banbury, about an hour's drive from home. We stopped off on the way for a wander around the town of Brackley, where we found a nice park with a lake and a group of geese pretending to be statues - we had to watch closely to spot any of them moving! After that we headed for Upton House, a National Trust property about 15 minutes the other side of Banbury. We had lunch in the cafe before exploring the house and grounds. 

It was bought in the 1920s by the owner of the Shell oil company, who decorated it in Arts and Crafts style, filled it with collections of art and china and bequeathed it to the National Trust in his will, with the provision that it should be left as it was so that the public could share his own enjoyment in the house and its contents. 

After puttering around the garden we went back to the cafe. Fortified with tea/coffee and cake we then went for a walk in the local countryside. Most National Trust properties have suggested local walks of various lengths - this time we picked the shortest as it was already mid-afternoon and the car park closed at 5.30. The highlight was this view from an escarpment looking over the site of the Battle of Edge Hill (the first major battle in the Civil War between Royalists and Parliamentarians, which took place in 1642). Apparently on a clear day it is possible to see 40 miles across to the Malvern Hills. 

 

After our walk we headed to Banbury and dinner at our hotel, which was originally an inn built in the 17th century, now much extended but still with the old inn at its centre. The hotel has quite a history. King James II stayed there in 1687, and Jonathan Swift stayed there while writing Gulliver's Travels - he took the name of Gulliver from a tombstone at the church on the opposite side of the road. Also one of the rooms was used as a secret meeting place for Catholic priests during penal times.  

We packed quite a lot into Saturday, so I'll put that into another post. In other news all our young folk have now had their first dose of Covid vaccines, except TG who is too young as the UK is currently only vaccinating over 18s. R and H and R's boyfriend all had Moderna, which hasn't been widely available in the UK until recently, and H's boyfriend had Pfizer. H came over this evening to watch the new Disney movie Luca with us. It is set on the Ligurian coast of Italy, where H spent her year abroad in 2018/19, so that was quite fun, although as it was an animated movie with a fictional location we didn't exactly recognise anywhere! It did mention H's university city of Genova though. She brought strawberries and chocolate with her, and we have concluded that strawberries with melted chocolate may be the ultimate movie snack!