T hink of the Cotswolds and you’ll probably conjure up images of chocolate-box villages in honeyed stone surrounded by dreamy patchworks of green fields, possibly farmed by Jeremy Clarkson. The region covers parts of six counties – most is in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, but also corners of Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Somerset – is a postcard-pretty holiday destination, and has been a hub for the wealthy since the heyday of the wool trade in the late middle ages. The Guardian’s journalism is independent.
We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. More recently, the region I call home had a PR coup when Taylor Swift and her entourage based themselves near Chipping Norton this summer for her London tour dates.
Then there are the stars of Bridgerton filming on the streets of nearby Bath, and traffic jams outside Clarkson’s farm shop , made famous by his TV show. But since I moved here in 2022, I have been searching out the wilder side of the Cotswolds, because to write off the region William Morris called “heaven on Earth” as a playground for the posh does it a disservice. The largest “national landscape” (the new name for areas of outstanding natural beauty) in England and Wales, the Cotswolds is also a surprising treasure trove, home to Roman snails, ancient stone circles and crowds busy chasing cheese down hills.
And it’s all crisscrossed by more than 3,000 miles of walking trails. Beyond the p.