Visiting the Cotswolds as a day trip from London

Last weekend Bradley and I celebrated our 8th anniversary, and we decided to spend the day outside of London. 

We decided to revisit the Cotswolds, a beautiful part of England full of picturesque little villages and green fields as far as you can see.

We last visited for a weekend trip in July 2011, and we have been wanting to go back ever since to visit The Slaughters, two tiny towns near Bourton on the Water, that we missed last time.

So we woke up super early on Saturday morning, and caught the 8.21 a.m. train from London Paddington to Moreton in Marsh.

It's Gromit!

Moreton in Marsh is the easiest town to train into for the Cotswolds, especially if you're visiting the Northern Cotswolds towns. A bus goes straight from the train station into various other towns in the region.

So upon arrival in Moreton, we hopped on the bus and had a short ride to the town of Stow on the Wold. Stow was one of our favourite towns we visited last time, it's tiny and centred around a large main square.

When we arrived we discovered Morris Dancers having their Annual Day of Dance in the main square. There were several different groups all doing different variations of Morris Dancing, an English folk dance accompanied to music where the dancers are usually wearing bells on their legs.

It's extremely popular in England, and we've seen it on lots of our trips around the country.

After watching the Morris dancers perform for a while, we continued wandering around Stow on the Wold and exploring more of the town.

Like all Cotswolds towns, the majority of buildings are made of golden Cotswold stone, and most are beautifully taken care of.

We stopped for lunch at Lucy's Tearoom, where we had toasted sandwiches with copious amounts of tea.

We figured we needed a good meal as we were planning on doing a 5 mile walk from Stow on the Wold to the Slaughters and on to Bourton on the Water.

After lunch, armed with some information from the tourist office, and also from a guide I downloaded onto my phone, we set off through the cemetery, down the road and into the countryside.

After a bit of confusion, we found the right path and headed off through the fields in the direction of Lower Slaughter. 

Once we got going, we discovered the route was really well signposted, with little arrows on fences pointing us in the right direction.

The whole walk was about 10 km and it was pretty flat the entire way.

We headed through fields, over bridges and through several people's farms, taking our time and enjoying the sunshine.

Halfway along the route, we came to a forked path, giving us the option to go on to Lower Slaughter or to to Lower Swell. We decided to continue on our planned route to the Slaughters, but having looked at photo's of the Swells, they look well worth a visit also! 

It's hard to plan which villages to visit in only a day trip, as all the Cotswold's villages are so beautiful and it's very easy to imagine purchasing a lovely cottage in any of them if we were to ever win the lottery.

As we were approaching Lower Slaughter, we came across a field full of hay bales. We sat down for a break with some Lemon Drizzle cake we had saved for the journey from Lucy's in Stow, before continuing on our walk.

As we came out of the fields and into Lower Slaughter we almost laughed at how picturesque and how much of a storybook English village it was. 

There were beautiful stone buildings, a lovely church and a small river running through the centre of town.

The Slaughters may have a terrible sounding name, but their name originates from the old English word Slohtre, which means a muddy place. It may have been a muddy village at one time, but it was lovely when we visited!

Both Upper and Lower Slaughter are very close to the bigger towns of Stow on the Wold and Bourton on the Water, but are extremely different, almost a world away. Bourton on the Water especially, is full of tourist shops, pubs and restaurants, but both Lower and Upper Slaughter were almost entirely devoid of any of these.

In Lower Slaughter there are a couple of restaurants and one shop, inside the museum in the Old Mill, whereas in Upper Slaughter we didn't see a single shop or restaurant.

After exploring tiny Lower Slaughter we headed up past the Old Mill and down a long and winding path leading to Upper Slaughter.

With no signs that we could see to confirm that we were heading in the right direction and with only a rough memory of what I had seen on a map, we headed along Wardens Way and through several fields before arriving in the even smaller village of Upper Slaughter.

The walk between the two towns is lovely, we were the only people walking when we set off, and only saw any other people once we had arrived in town.

Upper Slaughter is a tiny village, and there isn't much to see in the way of attractions, or anywhere to stop if you wanted something to eat. We spotted a Church spire in the distance so we headed down the road towards St Peters Church.

The Church has a little cemetery that overlooks the river below, so after wandering through the old gravestones, we headed in the direction of the river so we could get our feet wet and cool down.

This seemed to be the most popular spot in the village, there were a few people sitting by the river enjoying picnics in the sunshine.

We sat down on the side and took off our shoes, only to find the water was absolutely freezing when we put our feet in. It was very refreshing, but there would definitely be no relaxing with our feet in the water, it was quick dips in and out only!

After resting our tired feet for a while by the stream, we headed back along the path towards Lower Slaughter and onto Bourton on the Water since it was now getting into the late afternoon.

It is a very short walk from Lower Slaughter to Bourton, only about a mile or so, though the majority of the walk was along a main road, so quite a change from the peaceful walk from Stow to the Slaughters.

There is apparently another route that goes through the fields and along the River Windrush, but without a map for where this walk starts we decided not to end our day lost in the countryside.

Bourton on the Water is the busiest town in the Cotswolds, aside from perhaps Stratford upon Avon, and after spending the majority of the afternoon in sleepy towns with only a few other people, we found ourselves in a bustling town full of tourists.

Running through the centre of the town is the river Windrush, with little bridges going from one grassy bank to the other. It's because of this that Bourton has earned the nickname, Venice of the Cotswolds.

Bourton also has probably the most attractions of any of the other towns, with a model railway, a car museum and a little model village built to a one-ninth scale.

We stopped for a very late lunch at The Old Manse Hotel on the banks of the river, mostly because most of the other places had stopped serving food. It's always frustrating trying to find places that serve food after lunch but before dinner when we're in smaller towns, there's no Pret to grab a quick sandwich!

We both had Ploughman's sandwiches, and shared some chips and onion rings, just the thing we needed before we started the trip back to London.

Once we'd let the food settle, we hopped back on the bus towards Moreton in Marsh and had time for a stroll around Moreton before hopping on the train to take us home.

We'd read lots of things about how it's really hard to visit the Cotswolds in a day from London without a car, but we had no issues, and we actually found it less stressful as we didn't have to worry about where to park!