Discover the Wildside of the Cotswolds

Forget golden stone and chocolate-box charm, says Ellie Harrison.Behind the glossy rural glamour of Gloucestershire lies great untamed beauty – swathes of ancient land thrumming with raw nature.You just have to know where to find it...

- Ellie Harrison

When holiday guides and travel PR gurus spool through the Cotswold honey-coloured stone rhetoric, I get the same sinking feeling as seeing tourists dining in hotspot steak eateries in London. Please don’t spend your money on that. That’s not the authentic, living, real-world of the place. That’s the shouty part that wants your cash.

Sure, the stone has a yellow tone that fires up the Farrow & Ball-types (it’s more of a grey in the south of the region, which also fires up the Farrow & Ball-types), and indeed, that stone may tell a part of the history of the area as most building took place during the boom years of the wool trade. But it’s all relatively recent history, compared to the Cotswolds I’m going to show you: the natural history of this place, the geology, the prehistoric. This is a guide to the Wild Wolds (without the cots that penned the sheep) minus the gift-shops, the shiny clean 4x4s gliding over tarmac and without all the horses upon horses upon horses.

I know what you’re thinking. How wild can a place be if it doesn’t risk altitude sickness? Surely it’s fells, mountains and uplands that represent real wildness? A long time ago maybe, but as many now recognise, our uplands are disappointingly barren these days having been grazed to the quick. Granted, getting up high blows your hair right out of place and often affords you the chance to stomp around Heathcliff-style all alone and moody. But there’ll be plenty of that kind of free spirit in my guide, where the wind will make your ears ring and where your heartache will belong. As well as a huge diversity of wildlife, the great yard stick of wildness.

Come with me now to the less-explored ‘other side of the river’; to gems on the mighty River Severn itself; and to the secret discoveries among the part of the Cotswolds that you thought you knew.