Posts Tagged ‘travel’
Stow on the Wold Cotswolds is a perfect base for a trip to the heart of England.
This lovely wool town is centrally located in the Cotswolds. It is big enough to have plenty of hotels, bed and breakfast, shopping and sights to see….but small enough for lots of “village charm”.
The Cotwolds is a beautiful part of England with many stone villages and hamlets to explore. It is one of my favorite places in England. There are many sights to see and Cotswold walks to take. Make your getaway a walking holiday and hike on the paths between the villages.
The landscape is beautiful green rolling hills dotted with limestone brick villages and hamlets….picture perfect!
Stow on the Wold Cotswolds has several hotels. Two favorites are the Wyck Hill House Hotel and The Royalist Hotel. There are plenty of Bed and Breakfast. B&Bs are a great way to get to know the English people…and other travelers. Two Bed Breakfast Cotswolds to check out are Cotswolds Garden Tea Room B&B in a 17th century building and Corsham Field Farmhouse which is in the countryside, very close to town.
There are many shops and antique stores for browsing, most centered around the The Square.
My favorite thing to do in the Cotswolds is to explore all the wonderful, charming towns and hamlets in the countryside. One lovely nearby town is Burton on the Water. This is a very popular Cotswolds stop for tour groups so try and go early or late in the day and avoid weekends. There are several tourist sights to see in this Cotswold village. Take the easy walk between the quaint nearby hamlets of Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. These are just a few of the wonderful villages to explore in this great area of England.
Stow on the Wold Cotswolds in the “heart of England” is truly the best place to visit on England vacations.
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All About Green Travel
What exactly is meant by a phrase like Green Travel? Green Travel can mean anything from environmentally responsible motor cars to eco-friendly transportation fuels, to responsible eco-tourism options, sustainable travel or stays in hotels and facilities that are environmentally conscious.
Read on to find some great options on the Internet where you, the environmentally-responsible traveler, can enhance your knowledge and continue to seek the smartest, most planet-conscious choices available when you travel.
Why Green Travel Matters
Tourism, in contemporary times, is a tremendously growth-oriented industry, and is among the world’s largest, with spending figures estimated at over five hundred billion per year in recent years. Because of the overwhelming size of the industry globally, millions of people are employed within its ranks, and are therefore of great concern when it comes to responsible, eco-conscious decisions.
Such lofty statistics all begin with local, individual choices – where people spend their money when they travel, during their travel and the message that their actions send out to global populations. The impact of global travel, when geared toward the positive, can be terrific – including when tourism’s dollars go to the enhancement of local populations, or when travelers return home with a fresh take on other cultures, communities and environments, for instance.
How Tourism and Travel Become “Sustainable Tourism and Travel”
WTTC Associations such as the World Travel and Tourism Council in London, England, offer world travelers a wealth of information on sustainable and green tourism. The mission statement of the organization speaks to their goals: “Raising awareness of the importance of Travel & Tourism, promoting synergies between the public and private sector, generating profit as well as protecting natural, social and cultural environment [these] are the fundamental components of [their] mission, as outlined in the Blueprint for New Tourism.”
Whenever you travel, do what you can to extend the extra effort to ask questions about the businesses that service your trip: from hotels to tours to restaurants and more. Find out what you can about the impact of their businesses on the environment, in terms of both the physical and cultural aspects. No set of universal standards or guidelines currently exists to ensure that those in the travel and tourism industry world-wide operate according to environmentally conscious principles.
A good holiday doesn’t have to be expensive. Airline tickets, if booked early enough, cost lest than car parking charges at the airports.
Budgeting is the most difficult part of the holiday. Set a budget for that weekend break and stick to it. Patricia and I did and we nearly succeeded.
‘I never get the credit,’ said Patricia when she read my most recent holiday review in the News Letter. True, she plans the holiday, calculates the budget and makes the arrangements. She claims that all I do is tag along, write up the holiday afterwards and get the by-line in the paper. So I challenged her for full credit, a weekend break in England for two, with a budget of £200. ‘Easy,’ she said, and surfaced from the internet an hour later with airline tickets for two to Bristol, cost £75, and an arrangement to blow the balance of the budget at Colleys in exchange for free accommodation and transport from her sister. On the flight with us was a party of Bath University students. Apparently they chose different regions for weekends away, and this was their first trip to Ireland. They were impressed with the pub life.
Colleys in Lechlade-on-Thames is a Victorian style Dining Room, where the waiters dress in period costume. You sit down to dinner at seven forty five exactly and the carriage is called at eleven fifteen. Colleys has to be booked weeks in advance to be sure of a table. The chef had briefed every waiter as to my dietary needs and even made tomato soup specially so that I could enjoy all seven courses. He told us that a lactose free diet is quite common. The house wine is the one supplied to Her Majesty the Queen Mother.
Bristol is two hours from London and one hour from Cardiff. We stayed in Shrivenham, near Oxford. Our route from the airport took us past Swindon and the McArthur Glen Designer Outlets, 106 designer label shops under the one roof. Everything sold there has to be at least 30% off normal retail price but unfortunately we were between seasons and the choice of clothes was disappointing.
On the Friday we went to see Oxford of the dreaming spires. We spent two hours wandering round the old city. In an alleyway under Oxford’s copy of the famous Venetian “Bridge of Sighs” we found The Turf, arguably the oldest pub in England. Watch out for the low beams. The Covered Market is worth a visit for small local craft shops and the food is value for money.
In keeping with our budget weekend I chose a walking tour of Oxford as opposed to the open-top bus tour. There is a ghost in the library of St John’s College and things that go bump in the night in the adjoining study. Meanwhile Patricia and her sister, Margaret, had gone to check out Bicester Village Shopping Centre on Junction 9 of the M40. It got a five star rating for value shopping. The outlets there were even better than McArthur Glen.
On Saturday we went to explore Burford, a traditional and totally authentic town in the Cotswolds, with one long main street full of nooks and crannies and old houses of yellow stone. The craft shops there were expensive but good. Cirencester, where we went next, is a more traditional shopping town with all the usual outlets. Nice but fairly soulless. It set us up nicely for dinner in The French Horn, a traditional pub in Pewsey, Wiltshire. The food was superb and the table was ours for the evening.
On Sunday morning we were offered a chance to watch the parachuting at Netheravon. Arthur, our host, said that, statistically, the journey was more dangerous than jumping, but we opted instead for a drive through Lambourne, past Jenny Pitman’s house and stables. Then it was time to head back to Bristol and the airport.
Unfortunately for Patricia, she fell for two china pugs, Hooray and Henry, in Burford, and the budget was blown so she doesn’t get her by-line.