Diddly Squat in the Cotswolds

Leaving London and the Phoenix Hotel at Kensington Square Gardens for the Cotswolds today. We piled into a Mini Cab (Uber) and headed back to Heathrow to pick up the hire car.

We were lucky enough to get an upgrade, which we thought was great. To find out our upgrade was to an EV………… that means no internal combustion engine 😮. We hopped onto the M4 and off we went, quietly towards Stow On The Wold. We bypassed Oxford (we will explore it tomorrow possibly) and went on the B roads which took us through some beautiful little villages and towns on the way to Stow.

We rolled into Stow about 2pm. Is such a pretty village with a huge open area that was once the market square selling hay, grains, livestock and other local produce. Its now a huge parking area for tourists and locals as there is no off street parking or very little.

We are staying at Victoria House. It is a beautiful old 19th century former brewers house located on Sheep Street. As beautiful and full of history as these old places are, they are very uncomfortable to be in during an English heat wave, 34 deg today.

We had a wander around Stow and looked in the shops and bakeries, even stopped for a cuppa. After our walk we went back to Victoria house to unpack before heading of on a drive to Chipping Norton for a laugh to see Clarksons Farm.

It was a lovely drive through the tree lines back roads. We arrived at the Didley Squat Farm Shop but unfortunately Jeremy Clarkson wasn’t there.
By the time we took off from the farm, we saw we needed to charge the car.

Should be straight forward we thought……NOT. You would assume England would have this electric vehicle infrastructure sorted……WRONG. We have found it hard to find a charging station. They all charge the car at different electrical rates, and nowhere provides free charging. We had to leave the car at the Tesco’s on their charging station for hours. Dan and David went back after dinner to get it, luckily Tesco’s shuts at 11pm.

Been another big day, looking forward to more exploring of the Cot Coty Cotswolds!Read more