Glad Colin's at the Wheel

 Car-less we were, and we wanted to visit other villages. Beyond Broadway, we’d read of Stow-on-the-Wold, Burford, Bibury, and Bourton-on-the-Water, and were drawn by the poetry of their names and images conjured by a lifetime of reading English novels. But the thought of Dave navigating twisty Cotswolds lanes on the left side was too unnerving to contemplate. So, at a friend’s recommendation, we turned to Cotswold Tours and Travel and hired Colin Gill. 

Thank heavens we had a proficient local driver at the wheel, for the roads were narrow, basically one lane, cut, to my thinking, for horse and cart travel. Close-packed hedges skirted either side, a gauntlet of green that masked sight lines. I was buckled tight in the back seat and grateful to be so as, more than once, we rounded a blind curve to come nearly grill to grill with an oncoming car. Relaxed, friendly, and flexible, Colin was unfazed by such close encounters. To my squeaks of alarm, he said, “Just the way it is here. I’m used to it.”  

Oh my.  

Our first stop was Bourton-on-the Water, a lovely hamlet of earthy stone buildings along winding streams crossed by picturesque bridges. In my Google search for “best Cotswolds villages,” Bibury was tops, so Colin – willing to tweak his route however we wished – took us there next. Clearly others had read the same lists, and ours was a companionable stroll with a host of others. 

Over the course of the day, we walked to the edge of a steep escarpment where a shin-kicking competition and cheese rolling event are highlights of an annual festival. Elsewhere, we saw the remains of a Medieval cart wash across from a 1600’s almshouse that still houses the “less fortunate.” In Chipping Campden, Colin pointed out the ruins of a once illustrious estate burned in the 1600’s by the Royalists to prevent the Parliamentarians from using it. We also stopped at a brewery to sample the beer and admire the grounds, waterwheel, and lake where swans sailed across still water, their wakes sending shimmering patterns through the reflected fall colors. 

Later we swung by Broadway tower, but it was Stow-on-the-Wold that captivated me with its history, sights, and stories.

When we arrived in the town, Colin nestled the car in a spot on a side street, and we walked to the village square. Warmed by the sun, we were charmed by the encircling shops of ocher brick with shingled rooves and chimneys skinny as heron necks. But surely spirits whisper there, for in the final days of the English Civil War, on March 21, 1646, the lanes into the square were barricaded, and 200 Royalists were massacred. It was said the blood puddled so deep ducks could swim in it. 

Nearby, the Porch House, with sections of the building dating from 947 A.D., claimed to be “England’s oldest inn.” There, too, Time’s layers transform and muffle. Guests have pulled chairs close to the fireplace, and servers have shouldered trays of beer in the pub for hundreds of years, but unlike those long-ago visitors, we were not worried about witches. At our request, a burly, blond waiter was happy to show us the Medieval “witch marks” scratched into the surround of the fireplace to ward off hexes. 

In the corner of the square stands St. Edwards Church where hundreds of prisoners were held at the time of the massacre. Two twisting trees, graceful as dancers, flank the back entrance, reportedly inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Durin’s Door” in The Lord of the Rings. 

Inside the church, a memorial to the 45 soldiers from town who died in The Great European War, World War I, spans a wall. On a table nearby lay a plain, three-ring white binder filled with pages sheathed in plastic. Colin explained that the binder held pages on every lost soldier with pictures, facts about their lives, and reminiscences about the person they had been. As I turned the pages, I stopped periodically to read an entry or gaze at the photographs. Some of the 45 lost were so young, they were pictured in their school uniforms. I thought of the many lists of names on stone or bronze monuments in small towns and cities in every country. Every life cut short. Every name representing a family devastated by grief.  

Rupert Henry Ingles-Chamberlayne died on October 15, 1914, at the age of 17. Ten weeks after his death, his school mentor wrote to the boy’s mother, “His pleasant, open, smiling face… left no doubt in my mind of his character and upbringing. All I ever heard or saw of him only strengthened my first impression.” Rupert served in the Royal Navy and left behind his parents and four siblings.