Cotswalds - Bibury

In the morning, we left Chippin Camden and drove to the next main Cotswalds attraction - Bibury. On the way we stopped at Stow-on-the—Wold village and walked around. It had a beautiful St Edward’s church and very cute high street and central market square.

Then we drove to Bibury where we did a fascinating VoiceMap walk of the town. It’s famous for the row of small 14 century cottages, called Arlington row after the family that owned it. Fascinating detail is that the owner of that row of cottages moved to America in 1600s and then through some marriages the descendants moved to Virginia and founded a cemetery, which they named Arlington to commemorate their ancestors roots in England. So the Arlington cemetery is connected to this row of cottages! Another interesting detail that we learned from VoiceMap - we noticed that Bibury had an unusually large number of Japanese tourists. Apparently, Bibury is famous in Japanese anime because one character from a famous series lived in Bibury in Arlington row. So it’s extremely popular for Japanese tourists to visit it.

After Bibury, we drove to Cirencester where we stayed overnight. I had a delicious dosa for lunch there in the restaurant appropriately named Dosapark. In the afternoon I did a VoiceMap tour there. It’s a medieval market town with a beautiful cathedral and nice parks. There was also a curios site - one estate was protected from the public eye by the worlds tallest hedge - it’s in the Guiness book!Read more