Liberal Arts Blog — UK (Part Twenty One) The Cotswolds — The Rolling Hills, The Honey-Colored Limestone Villages, The Meadows, The Woodlands
Liberal Arts Blog — Sunday is the Joy of Humor, Food, Travel, Practical Life Tips, and Miscellaneous Day
Today’s Topic: UK (Part Twenty One) the Cotswolds — the rolling hills, the honey-colored limestone villages, the meadows, the woodlands
Put simply, is the Cotswolds the most charming place on earth? If not, what is?
Is it the incarnation of the word “picturesque”? This “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty” (AONB) straddles six counties — Gloucestershire (primarily), Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Wiltshire, and Somerset. It has been a favorite filming location — notably for Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, Bridget Jones Diary, Pride and Prejudice, Father Brown, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.
Have you been to Castle Combe in Wiltshire? How about Bibury or Bourbon-on-the- water in Gloucestershire?
But if it’s so charming, where are the inspiring quotes from literature? Is the Cotswolds in fact over-rated? over-hyped?
US Vice President JD Vance is rumored to be renting a house in the Cotswolds this August. Has he been duped?
If you were to recommend one place in England to rent a cottage for a week, where would it be?
Today a few more notes.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
CASTLE COMBE IN WILTSHIRE — “the prettiest village in England”
1. The “Wolds” of the “Cotswolds” are “rising hills that rise from the meadows of the upper River Thames in an escarpment above the Severn Valley and the Vale of Evesham.”
2. “The area is defined by the bedrock of Jurassic limestone that creates a type of grassland habitat that is quarried for the golden-colored Cotswold stone.”
3. The area “covers 787 square miles, with boundaries roughly 25 miles across and 90 miles long, stretching south-west from just south of Stratford-upon-Avon to just south of Bath.”
BOURBON-ON-THE-WATER IN GLOUCESTER: “the Venice of the Cotswolds’
1. What is your favorite nook in the Cotswolds?
2. Your most cherished photograph?
3. The perfect garden? stately home?
NB: Are the Cotswolds one of the places so beautiful that no photograph has ever been able to capture it?
BIBURY IN GLOUCESTER — most famous for “Arlington Row”
1. The mystery is that there are no great literary quotes about the Cotswolds that I could find.
2. How could that possibly be if it is in fact so charming?
3. If Wordsworth wasn’t inspired to rhapsodize over it, could it in fact be over-rated, over-hyped?
FOOTNOTE — Cornwell Manor in Chipping Norton, featured in “The Holiday” with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law. Now a luxury wedding venue. If you were planning a wedding in the UK, what location would you select?
Bourton-on-the-Water — Wikipedia
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Anything miscellaneous to share? Best trip you ever took in your life?Practical life tips? Random facts? Jokes?
Or, what is the best cartoon you have seen lately? or in the last 10 years? or the last 50?
Or what is your favorite holiday food? Main course? Dessert?
Fondest food memories? Favorite foods to eat or prepare?
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your mind a memory that might otherwise disappear. Or to think more deeply about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
