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Gloucestershire guide: where to stay and what to do
At the Woolpack Inn in Slad, Gloucestershire, a stream of ramblers file in from the Laurie Lee Wildlife Way to sup on pints of Uley’s Pigs Ear and down cheese toasties under bunches of dried hops. Chalked on the wall is a list of regulars who frequent this tiny 17th-century saloon. Honest and old-school, the inn lures people from far and wide. The surrounding valley’s gentle folds, hawthorns and scented orchards have seduced people – including its most notable resident, Cider With Rosie author Laurie Lee – for centuries. In his diaries, Lee looked back to his childhood, when roads and byways were plied by horse and cart. Although the purr of engines has now replaced the clop of hooves, Gloucestershire still feels like it has respect for its past. Yes, there’s its “Glosse Posse” reputation: Rivals was partly filmed here, inspired by the county’s equestrian set; King Charles’s beloved Highgrove is near Tetbury; and William and Harry famously (mis)spent parts of their youth in the area’s polo fields and pub gardens. Yet much of the county remains the England of old, from the Forest of Dean, shrouded in velveteen moss, to the small, slightly eccentric town of Painswick, with its village stocks and -yew-studded graveyard redolent of the ghosts of the past.
Cirencester’s small, fascinating Corinium Museum tells the story of England’s Roman past; and the grand, villa-lined Cheltenham lures a spirited racing crowd to its boutiques and genteel hostelries. Inevitably there is the Cotswold-core gleam that has made popular destinations of the honey-hued Bamford-owned villages and the tearoom-lined streets of Chipping Campden. But there are two sides to the story: the old wool town of Stow-on-the-Wold hosts a raucous Traveller-led horse fair every May and October; in nearby Longborough, at the summer’s open-air opera, guests pour glasses of Krug while listening to Rossini cantatas. And in Stroud, jester-hatted buskers at the famous Saturday farmers’ market jostle for space with Schöffel-clad shoppers brunching on tartiflette.
