The Cotswolds is a region of rolling hills, dry-stone walls, and honey-colored villages that represents the idealized vision of the English countryside. Designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, this 800-square-mile stretch across Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and neighboring counties contains some of the most perfectly preserved medieval market towns in England. The distinctive warm golden limestone that defines every cottage, church, manor house, and garden wall gives the region a visual coherence that feels almost too picturesque to be real. Villages like Bibury, with its iconic Arlington Row of weavers’ cottages, Castle Combe, and the Slaughters look as though they have barely changed in centuries.

Each village offers its own character and charms. Bourton-on-the-Water, crisscrossed by low stone bridges over the River Windrush, is often called the Venice of the Cotswolds. Stow-on-the-Wold features an atmospheric market square surrounded by antique shops and tearooms. Chipping Campden retains its medieval wool-trading grandeur with a magnificent perpendicular Gothic church funded by wealthy merchants. Broadway, beneath the escarpment, is the gateway to hilltop walks offering views across the Vale of Evesham. Between the villages, a network of footpaths including sections of the 102-mile Cotswold Way traverses a quintessentially English landscape of sheep-dotted meadows, ancient woodlands, and wildflower-filled verges.

Pro tip: The Cotswolds are best explored by car, as public transport between villages is limited. Base yourself in Stow-on-the-Wold or Chipping Campden and make day loops visiting three or four villages each day. Visit Bibury before 10:00 to see Arlington Row without the tour-bus crowds, and always check if a village pub serves a traditional Sunday roast, which is the quintessential Cotswolds experience.