Bourton-On-The-Water, Essence of the Cotswolds

Thursday 30 May 1998. After our day in Bibury and climbing up never-ending hills looking for Barrows, Fran and I spent the first of two nights at Bourton-on-the-Water.

This is early morning after a wonderful breakfast in the conservatory of the hotel - I had to wear sunglasses to breakfast, it was extremely nice!!!

The river is delightfully named the River Windrush and it babbles under several low distinctive bridges. There is plenty of greenery and lots of colour in the trees and flowers.

The buildings are all of the Cotswold mould - the area has inspired many model cottages. In fact, Fran has a collection of them, taking up valuable space that could be used for guitars, pinballs or jukeboxes!

This is the village toy shop! I spent ages looking at model trains and Dinky cars and of course I had to part with a bit of cash... I had been trying to collect models of all the cars I'd personally owned, but finding recent models (unless one happens to own a Porsche or Ferrari) is not easy at all.

Strange really, I always remember as a boy wanting models of my Dad's car to play with. However I did find a model MkIII Ford Cortina even though mine was a slightly earlier version with different shaped headlights. I bought it and intended undertaking the sacrilege (to serious model collectors) of painting it in the colours of my own car of several years ago. (I never did though...)

At one end of the village we paused to watch the river for a while and looked round the yard of the Motor Museum. It's not big, but every inch of space is used inside! An old pickup van is parked in the yard to give a taste of what awaits the visitor.

The museum cat was weighing itself on the scales (above) whilst a familiar yellow car announced his presence. At the time my niece Heather, loved the childrens' TV programme "Brum" about the little car with a mind of its own that sneaks out of this very museum and has adventures in the big city (a rather long way away from here...) So is he really here?

Of course he is!!!

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Bourton-On-The-Water

Sunday 5 June 1994. Typical isn't it? Our last day - the day on which we had to drive back and the weather was beautiful! Still, we were only a few hours from home and there was most of the day to potter about. Bourton on the Water is a beautiful place. Peaceful and lazy.

And that just about describes us that morning too... We rose and sort of fell into clothes and reluctantly threw all the other clothes into the suitcase in preparation for going back home. We had breakfast, staring bleary eyed out of the window at this gorgeous scene and decided it would be a slow meander homewards with lots of stopping off at places.

First, however, we would have a walk along the River Windrush that runs under these wonderful little bridges. A cat was stalking the ducks in the picture above. Muscles bunched, he rushed out of cover...and of course made a hash of it and the ducks took to the safety of the water leaving the cat to sit and wash its leg to cover its embarrassment.

Service in the tea rooms shown above left much to be desired. They were busy, but only because people were forced to spend far longer than necessary in there waiting to be served and - incredibly - waiting to pay!

We left, eventually, reflecting that any Blackpool cafe who left people standing at the till so long would lose their payment in no time at all! However if you visit don't let this put you off because this was, after all, 15 years ago at time of writing and they will have either got better - or gone bust and someone else will have taken it over!

At the end of the village is a motor museum that is well worth a look. Even the kiddies will enjoy it because it is the home of Brum the little car from the children's TV show. Brum can be found amongst the exhibits which are many. I would quite happily go back for another look.

So we reach the end of the village and the end of our brief weekend stay. But there's plenty to see on our way home and the next place on our list is a place of Slaughter!!!

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