Why my heart belongs to the Cotswolds

Arguably our most-loved Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and long at the top of tourists’ must-visit lists, the allure of the Cotswolds is as strong as ever. Paula Lester meets seven people who are lucky enough to call it home

- Paula Lester

WHETHER it’s the collection of pleasing, pale-stoned cottages grouped around the triangular village green at Little Barring ton, the stone footbridges that span the River Eye in Lower Slaughter or the way the triple-turreted Broadway Tower rises from one of the highest points in the landscape, the Cotswolds is a many-splendoured place.

Celebrated by great writers and poets, such as Hilaire Belloc, who rhapsodised of the Evenlode—‘A lonely river all alone/She lingers in the hills and holds/A hundred little towns of stone/Forgotten in the western wolds’— it is, without doubt, one of the most enchanting regions in Britain. Every time I have had the pleasure of visiting the area—covering some 800 square miles in five counties (Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire), which can be traced on a map from Chipping Campden in the north down to the Regency grandeur of Bath in the south—I’ve pondered why it has remained largely untouched and still draws more than 38 million visitors a year.