around Chipping Campden

Chipping Campden is our base for the next few days. It’s a town whose history goes back about a thousand years but whose oldest building still standing and in use has been around a mere 700 years. It’s a town whose citizens honour the values of the past by ensuring that new structures are visually compatible with the old and that new practices do not overwhelm those of the past. It’s a town without a McDonalds and a KFC, and as far as I can see, without even a service station where I can refuel my 21st century car. But the cars are allowed in the town and several hundred spend the night here every night. And a main road with most modern facilities is not far away.

There seems little doubt that many of the locals are wealthy. Perhaps they are just weekend people who arrive from London on Friday and leave on Sunday but during the weekend there are plenty of Audis, Beemers, Benzs parked in the limited spaces or visible through narrow lane ways in the back yards.

The town is surrounded by agriculture. As we look out through our kitchen window a ploughed field is central to our view, no more than 100m away. If you walk away from the village in any direction you will quickly come across open fields and sheep.

Thatched roofs are common, although not universal. And all thatched roofs are enclosed in wire netting presumably to deter nesting by birds and other creatures.

But the Cotswolds limestone is ubiquitous. It is paler than the stone found in Scotland, Wales and Yorkshire and it reflects sunlight in a pleasing way.

Most of the main street buildings are genuinely ancient. Even the grocery store is housed in a main street building in which I could easily bump my head on a cross beam, and I’m not tall. But some of the newer buildings try to pretend they’re old. Our apartment, for example, has exposed “beams” on the ceiling which are held up by screws and also has a fake fireplace which would be a fire hazard if someone tried to light a fire in it. The apartment seems to have a genuinely ancient floor, however, which slopes downward toward the north. But the doors all fit, and the external walls are all made of Cotswold limestone blocks.

We’ve yet to come up with a favourite view, but we’re working on it. Every day we’re here brings new discoveries. Next blog we intend to tell you about walking in the countryside around the village.