Cotswolds Coach Holidays and Guided Tours
The Cotswolds follow a limestone ridge for the best part of ninety miles, from south of Bath up into Warwickshire. The stone is the reason it all looks so consistent: honey-coloured in the north around Broadway and Chipping Campden, greyer as you move south, and almost always quarried within a few miles of the village it built.
Our holidays here are three- or five-day coach breaks, based in one hotel with a driver who stays with the group throughout. Sudeley Castle appears on most of them. So do the gardens at Hidcote, Kiftsgate and Highgrove, and in December the Christmas markets at Bristol and Bath.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Cotswolds Tours
They run either three days or five days. The three-day tours are the festive breaks; the five-day tours give you four nights in one hotel with a full excursion each day. All of them include private coach travel, the services of the driver throughout, breakfast and evening meals, and the entrance fees listed on that tour's page. Each tour lists exactly what it covers, so read the inclusions before booking.
More than on a general sightseeing tour, and mostly on garden paths. Places like Hidcote, Sudeley and Batsford involve gravel walks, grass, some steps and gentle slopes, and you would typically be on your feet for an hour or two at each. There is no obligation to cover every corner, and the coach is always the base. If you have concerns about distances or surfaces at a particular property, ask us before you book.
Not at all, but it can affect the price. Hidcote is a National Trust property, and on some of our tours the entrance is included if you are a member and payable if you are not — the wording on each tour's inclusions makes this clear. Bring your membership card with you. If you are unsure how it applies to the departure you are looking at, ask us and we will confirm.
It depends on the departure. Several of our Cotswolds tours release a set number of single rooms with no supplement at all, and those go early. Others carry a supplement, which is stated on the tour page. Solo travellers are common on these breaks and the group setting suits them well, with a shared evening meal each night. Ring or email us and we will tell you what is available on the date you want.
Highgrove features on some of our Cotswolds tours, with a guided garden tour and lunch included where it is listed. Visitor numbers there are strictly limited and places must be arranged well in advance, so it is not something that can be added to a booking at short notice. Check the individual tour page to see whether Highgrove is included, and ask us about availability on a specific departure.
Yes. Any of our Cotswolds itineraries can be run as a private group for a gardening club, U3A branch, church group or a set of friends, and we can adjust the excursions to suit the group's interests. We have run these tours for arts societies and garden groups. Prices on private departures are usually based on a minimum number of passengers, so tell us roughly how many you expect and we will quote.
The great Cotswold gardens
This is one of the densest concentrations of important gardens in England, and several of them sit within a few miles of one another. Hidcote, laid out by Lawrence Johnston from 1907, is the garden that taught the twentieth century about outdoor rooms — hedged compartments opening one into the next, ending in a view over the Vale of Evesham. Kiftsgate Court is across the lane, steeper and more personal, home to the rose that carries its name and now scrambles thirty feet into a tree.
Our garden tours draw on that cluster. Bourton House with its clipped box and herbaceous borders, Batsford Arboretum for magnolias in spring and Japanese maples in autumn, Barnsley House where Rosemary Verey worked out her potager and laburnum walk, and Highgrove, with its guided tour and lunch on the tours that include it.
Excursions vary by departure, so check the individual itinerary for what is confirmed.
Sudeley Castle and its ten gardens
Sudeley turns up on nearly every Cotswolds tour we run, and with reason. It is the only castle in England with a queen buried in its grounds: Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth wife, who died here in 1548 and lies in St Mary's Chapel a short walk from the house. The estate has been occupied for a thousand years, and the ruined tithe barn and banqueting hall are left deliberately unrestored, with roses growing through them.
Ten gardens surround the castle, the Queen's Garden the best known of them, planted with old varieties of rose either side of a double yew hedge and at its peak in June. Some of our tours pair a guided history of the house with a walking tour of the gardens and a Cotswold cream tea; in December, the grounds are lit for Christmas after dark.
Villages built on wool money
The Cotswolds were rich long before anyone came here for the scenery. Medieval fleece from Cotswold sheep — the Cotswold Lion, big-boned and long-fleeced — was the most valuable wool in Europe, and the merchants spent their profits on churches and houses. That is why villages of a few hundred people have churches the size of small cathedrals, at Northleach, Chipping Campden and Cirencester, with brass memorials showing merchants standing on woolsacks.
Bibury is the village most people picture: Arlington Row, a terrace of seventeenth-century weavers' cottages above the River Coln, once a wool store for the monks of Osney Abbey. Tetbury is a working market town rather than a showpiece, with its pillared Market House of 1655 and a good number of antique shops. Nearby Chavenage, an Elizabethan manor of 1576, has been a location for Poldark and Lark Rise to Candleford.
Christmas markets and festive breaks
Our shorter Cotswolds breaks are three-day festive tours, and they work on a simple pairing: a historic house dressed for the season, and a city market with the lights on. Sudeley Castle is illuminated after dark, with light installations through the gardens and the ruins, which is a very different experience from a summer visit.
The market side means Bristol, and on some departures Bath. Bath's market spreads through the Georgian streets around the Abbey and the Roman Baths — around two hundred wooden chalets in the narrow lanes, which is atmospheric but busy at weekends. Bristol's runs along Broadmead and the surrounding centre.
These tours stay two nights and include breakfast and evening meals. Several departures carry a number of single rooms at no supplement, so solo travellers are worth checking with us early.
