Cotswolds - cute but I wouldn't want to live here. It is hard work finding your way around. We took wrong turns every day, and called them alternate scenic routes. Really, that was fine, we had plenty of time to get lost. But what was not fun were the strange traffic jams in the middle of nowhere with trees and fields all around and not a house in sight. What? They captured us in mid to late afternoon, and seem to be caused by traffic pausing to get through a round-about or intersection. The problem with the Cotswolds is that it is surrounded by several large cities. People live here and commute to those cities, and people who live in those cities come here on the weekend, like the Dandenongs next to Melbourne.
It is hard work eating your lunch from the bottom of the stream and you just have to ignore the tourist taking unfaltering photos of your behind. It must feel like this for the human residents of the Cotswolds villages too.
Bibury is one of tourist stops. Very pretty and tiny.
It was once a mill town, processing wool from the famous Cotswold sheep, these are the cottages built for the mill workers and still lived in.
We went searching for traces of our ancestors, which was great because it took us to quiet un-touristy villages. Sheryl has A LOT of rellies around Cirencester in the southern Cotswolds. We wandered through six villages searching for traces of them. Sheryl's 3 times great-grandmother may have been born in one of these pretty cottages.
And her husband, William Bastin, is buried here in another village a few miles away, probably in one of the graves where the headstone has been rendered unreadable by the passing of time and weather.
This is one of mine. It is called Besselsleigh, just south of Oxford. We had morning tea in the pub.
And a wander through the tiny village of stone cottages and the church yard.
No Bessell graves in the church yard but that is probably because they owned the manor house and all the land and the village...back in medieval times. I don't yet know how I am connected back to these people but with an unusual name like Bessell they surely must be related somehow. The original manor house and its later 18th century replacement are long gone. All that is left is a heritage listed gate pillar in the field next to the church. Yes - the pillar really is heritage listed.
My other village near here is called Siston, another collection of old stone houses and some newer ones, a church and no shops, located on the eastern edge of Bristol. There are about a dozen Jefferis graves here including a new one. The family have been in this area since at least the early 1600s. Mary, one of their daughters married William Bessell from Bristol and became my 3 times great-grandmother. This is one of the Jefferis family graves.
Some nice lunches in cute pubs, this one on the banks of the Thames River.
This pink one in one of the untouristy villages
Thus passed the first half of our Cotswolds week.
No comments:
Post a Comment