Coach Holidays to the Cotswolds
The Cotswolds cover a good deal more ground than the postcards suggest — some ninety miles of limestone hills running from Chipping Campden down towards Bath, with the best of the villages scattered along lanes that were never built with cars in mind. Seeing them properly means a great many short journeys, which is precisely what a coach does well.
Our Cotswold holidays are based in a single hotel, with an experienced driver, dinner and breakfast, and the excursions already arranged: gardens and great houses in the warmer months, Sudeley Castle and the Christmas markets in December.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Coach Holidays to Cotswolds Tours
Late May and June are hard to better if gardens are the reason you are going — Hidcote and Kiftsgate are at their fullest and the roses are out. September gives you softer light, warm stone and thinner crowds in the villages. December is a different holiday altogether, built around Sudeley Castle's lights and the Bath and Bristol markets. The villages themselves look well in any month.
A moderate amount, spread across the day rather than done all at once. Gardens such as Hidcote and Sudeley have gravel paths, grass and some gentle slopes, and village streets like those at Bibury and Bourton are uneven in places. There is always the option of staying with the coach or finding a bench. If you have a particular concern about distances or standing, tell us before you book and we will talk you through the specific itinerary.
Across our Cotswold coach tours the price covers private coach travel throughout, the services of an experienced driver, hotel accommodation with breakfast and evening meals, the listed excursions and a cancellation protection policy. Lunches, drinks and anything you buy at the markets are your own. Inclusions vary slightly between tours, so check the individual tour page or ask us and we will confirm exactly what is covered on the departure you are considering.
On several of our Cotswold tours, yes. The three-day festive breaks each carry ten single rooms at no supplement, and Gems of the Cotswolds carries six. They are limited in number and tend to be taken early, so it is worth ringing sooner rather than later. If they have gone, ask us what the supplement would be on that departure before you decide.
Hidcote is a National Trust property, and on Gems of the Cotswolds the excursion entry arrangements assume membership for the Trust properties on the itinerary. If you are a member, bring your card. If you are not, please ask us when you book so we can tell you what the entrance charge would be on the day and make sure nothing catches you out.
Yes. Any of our Cotswold itineraries can be run as a private group for a gardening club, U3A branch, church group or a set of friends travelling together, with the whole coach to yourselves. Departure arrangements and dates are agreed with you rather than fixed. Get in touch with the rough number of travellers and the time of year you have in mind, and we will put costings together.
Why a Coach Suits the Cotswolds
Almost everything worth stopping for in the Cotswolds sits at the end of a narrow lane with a stone wall on either side and nowhere obvious to leave a car. Bourton-on-the-Water and Bibury fill up by mid-morning in summer. The climb up Fish Hill out of Broadway is steep enough to concentrate the mind. None of that matters much when someone else is driving.
The distances between places are short — twenty minutes here, half an hour there — so a day can take in a garden in the morning, a village for lunch and a market town in the afternoon without anyone feeling rushed. Coaches drop close to the entrance and collect at an agreed time, which removes the usual business of circling for a space.
It also means everyone sees the countryside between the stops, which in the Cotswolds is a fair part of the pleasure.
Wool Villages and Honey-Coloured Stone
The whole character of the region comes out of the ground beneath it. Cotswold stone is a Jurassic limestone, easy to cut and full of iron, which is why it weathers to that particular colour. The tone shifts as you travel: deep gold and apricot in the north around Chipping Campden and Stanton, paler and greyer as you move south towards Bath.
The money came from sheep. Medieval wool merchants built churches far larger than their villages ever needed — Northleach, Cirencester and Chipping Campden are the ones to look for, with brasses in the floor showing merchants standing on woolsacks. When the trade collapsed, there was nothing to pay for rebuilding, which is the reason so much of the seventeenth century is still standing.
Bibury's Arlington Row began as a wool store in the fourteenth century and was converted into weavers' cottages some three hundred years later. Bourton's low stone bridges cross the Windrush, which is barely a foot deep.
Gardens and Great Houses
The northern Cotswolds hold one of the strongest concentrations of garden-making in England, and our five-day Gems of the Cotswolds takes in several of them.
- Hidcote — Lawrence Johnston began planting in 1907 and laid the garden out as a series of hedged rooms, each with its own colour scheme and mood. It shaped English garden design for the rest of the century.
- Kiftsgate Court — directly across the lane from Hidcote, made by three generations of the same family. The rose that carries its name grows through the trees and is reckoned the largest in the country.
- Bourton House — a walled garden beside a sixteenth-century tithe barn, with imaginative planting in a small space.
- Sudeley Castle — Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's wives, is buried in the chapel in the grounds. The Queens' Garden is enclosed by clipped yew hedges.
May and June are the fullest months, though the gardens hold their shape well into September.
The Cotswolds at Christmas
Two of our Cotswold breaks are built around December, pairing Sudeley Castle after dark with the city markets to the south. The castle grounds are lit for the season, with illuminated displays along the paths and through the trees — best seen once the light has gone, which in December means not long after four o'clock.
Bath's Christmas market is the draw in the West Country: wooden chalets packed into the streets around the Abbey and the Roman Baths, mostly selling work by makers from the South West rather than the usual imported stock. Bristol's markets bring a different crowd and a livelier atmosphere.
Both festive tours are three days with two nights at the Mercure Bristol North The Grange, breakfast and evening meals included, and a number of single rooms carried at no supplement. Wrap up warmly — the castle trail is outdoors throughout.
