Top 5 favorite Cotswold villages with Kids

 

Our family loves the Cotswolds so much we are headed back for a 3rd time this October! But in the meantime, I wanted to round up my top 5 favorite Cotswolds villages with kids.

Now granted, I've never been to every Cotswold village so if you have some better contenders, let me know! I'd love to hear from you! These are just the favorites we've visited that I really enjoyed! Let's begin....

1) Bourton-on-the-Water

This magical little hamlet is the perfect home base for your Cotswold experience. First of all, it is so dreamy with the river Windrush running through the heart of the town. The river is very shallow so in the summer months when it's warmer, kids can wade in the water and enjoy splashing around. Secondly, there is a huge green area along the river perfect for picnics. We spent each evening relaxing on the green eating dinner. There are multiple restaurants right in the area to grab food, Kevin loved the Chip Shed (for good fish and chips), I loved the Riverside Cafe (which had a few gluten free options), and my kids especially loved the chicken nuggets and fries from a shop across the street. Not to mention, there is a delightful little candy shop and ice cream trolley around town! All very walkable! Other fun things for kids include the Bouton-on-the-Water Model Village (a miniature village made of Cotswold stone!), the Bourton Model Railway Exhibit, and Birdland (housing around 500 birds!). There is also a really cool Dragonfly Maze, and the Bourton Motoring Museum & Toy Collection. So as you can see...there is a LOT to do with kids in the little town!

2) Stow-on-the-Wold

I just adore Stow, it's the quintessential Cotswold town with the magnificent old growth trees surrounding the church door (inspiration for Tolkien's Lord of the Rings), its tea room (Lucy's tea room is my favorite in all of England), and it's cute square and surrounding shops and pubs. Rick Steve's has an excellent walking tour of Stow in his book. It's very walkable for the kids, had lots of great food options for everyone, and is just really lovely. I would highly recommend the Porch Light pub to eat it! We all loved loved the food there, including our kids!

3) Chipping Camden

(Sadly, all our pictures from Chipping Camden were deleted, so this one is from here)

There's a lot of history in Chipping Camden as it was once a great market town in the Cotswolds. Rick Steve's has a great tour of this beautiful village which we spent a morning walking and reading off his information. Avonlea and I love the Angelina Ballerina books, and I swear the illustrator must have used Chipping Camden as a model as the high street in her books! l Again, this is a very walkable place with kids and has plenty of great restaurant options. We stayed at the Lygon Arms and had a wonderful experience, they have both a yummy pub and tea room. My favorite was the huge fire place you can go warm yourself by if you're coming in the from the cold! 

4) Lower Slaughter

We spent a morning exploring this small village, and it was the perfect place for kids to run around and discover. There are little bridges and paths that our kids found so much fun. There's little traffic as it's such a tiny hamlet, and it's so picturesque. A great place to get some wiggles out before getting back in a car! If you have time, pop in for tea at the Slaughter's Manor House!

Very close to Lower Slaughter, Stow & Bourton on the Water is an adorable farm park called The Cotswolds Farm Park. I would 100% recommend this with kids. Our children adored all the playgrounds, opportunity to feed the animals, trampoline, and all around fun! We could have stayed here all day, it was incredible. Not to be missed with kids!!

5) Blockley

(Sadly, all our pictures from Blockley were deleted, so this one is from here)

Anyone ever watched the Father Brown series on Netflix? It's about a priest in the 1950's who solves crimes. It's actually filmed in Blockley and we had so much fun seeing all the filming sites from the show! Blockley is an adorable town. It's not huge, so easy to walk around. The churchyard was a lot of fun to explore, and the church itself was neat to see because of the show!

Like I mentioned, we are headed back this Fall and I'm so excited to explore more Cotswolds towns. If you have any good ones you think I should see, please let me know!