A guide to mastering the local ways of the Cotswolds

You hear about the rolling hills and quintessentially English towns of the Cotswolds, but not about its offbeat – and, at times, confusing – quirks. Here’s a handy guide to help navigate them

With yellowing stone tearooms, gift shops and lawns by the River Windrush, the Gloucestershire village of Bourton-on-the-Water is ‘quaintness itself’ (Illustrations by John Wright)

I knew I should’ve said no to the fifth pint which preceded me waking up with white clothes and bells tied to my legs – you have to be so careful when you move to the Cotswolds. I should know.

Learn to live in a sparkling jewel

The Cotswolds is graced with towns and villages they call “jewels”, picture-perfect places with the pride to match. But if you move to one, get to your local shop early before the visiting day-trippers buy all the bread and sausages.

It was a hot day in May 2009 when we drove into the Gloucestershire village of Bourton-on-the-Water, quaintness itself with yellowing stone tearooms, gift shops and lawns by the River Windrush. Less rushing than idling, but call it that if you don’t want your tyres let down. “Bourton” is no stranger to tourist coaches, one new resident complaining about them was politely reminded by those more used to guarding their parking spaces that you don’t get the prosperity without the traffic.

Or find a quieter Cotswold town

Although the Cotswold Hills (extending 100-plus miles from the West Country to the Midlands) cover a fair chunk of Gloucestershire, they also adorn five other counties without all their inhabitants realising it. We moved to Charlbury, a more subtly picturesque town in Oxfordshire that pulls in almost no tourists, but is proof that you don’t have to be big to be powerful. With its own railway station (London in 1¼ hours) accessible places like this are crawling with influential types.

Charlbury is a market town in the heart of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds (John Wright)

Whatever you do don’t live just outside this area of outstanding natural beauty!

Step outside this AONB haven (where one merely yawns to get a pothole refilled) and there’s a different world altogether. The village of Ardley, 10 miles northeast, has a waste treatment plant with incinerator despite local protests. No anger evident in the Fox and Hounds the night I dropped my kids at a nearby party. The customers were either resigned to having it, proud to have the jobs, or like me were passing through.

Learn the language first

When our cricketing daughters were told they were playing at Tew, we saw Great Tew, Little Tew and Duns Tew on the map but no Tew. It was shorthand for Great Tew. Also, there are no highwaymen in Andoversford, no Turk called Dean living at Turkdean, and nor does Little Wolford mean a little wolf lives there.

Yes, you can donate books... if they pass their exam

You may receive a leaflet about Street Fair guidelines for donating books. Ours said they should be “clean and smart” such as “up to date novels, travel documentaries, children’s books, and reference books”. Beware in case the Stow-in-the-Wold stocks are brought back into use for anyone arriving with a slightly soiled Jeffrey Archer.

The Bring and Take event happens twice a year in Charlbury's Memorial (John Wright)

Protective clothing is advisable on the ‘Bring and Take’ days

You can still find those comforting jumble sales where everything costs 20p. But the bric-a-brac “Bring and Take” dos they have now have aroused a new breed of punter that even organisers fear. Bring things to give away and take anything else for free, but get ready to dodge those who come mob-handed with big bags and trolleys to grab as much as they can to sell next weekend at their car boot sale.

Be patient and sheer pleasure will befall you

The famous patchwork scenery changes colour with the sweep of clouds or sunshine. You’ll also not wait long in the Cotswolds before you see deer jump through hedges into the road (yes, sometimes right next to you so get ready to brake!), hares dance in a circle, an elderly ex-farmer build a perfect dry-stone wall, and meet local people like a former housemaid from the lord’s estate or a hedgelayer who taught Prince Charles how to do it.

Check first before doing something innocent

Don’t call a market town described thus by ancient royal charter “a pretty village”. Don’t press the bell on the bus more than once. One bus driver is called “Only One Ding!” by our children because that’s what he shouts if anyone does. Don’t sell ice cream from a tricycle in Lower Slaughter where the parish council deemed it “totally inappropriate” because “new grass seed has been sown”, oh and children might fall in the river.

Don’t assume Cotswold villages are always sleepy

Police sirens are heard and there have been drug raids. I don’t know if they are still looking for Mr Big but they should probably keep an eye on our diminutive neighbour and that roomy hat she wears down to church!

The centre of Gloucester (John Wright)

Then there’s the rivalry

A BBC Gloucestershire survey heard, “All Tetbury folk do is trim their hedges and doff caps at some rare hawk-killing ‘upper-echelon’ gun-toter,” a gun-toter replying, “Hawk shooting is indulged in by the finest gentry and townies who knock it are jealous, even if our bush-trimming does ‘border’ on the obsessive.”

Discover towns with a life of their own, whether tourists flock there or not

Winchcombe’s a wonderfully cosy lived-in place. Inviting town centre with half-timbered buildings, whopping wool church, people talking, regular shops and cafes, and impressively large Cleeve Hill – the Cotswolds’ highest point overlooking Cheltenham and Tewkesbury on the plain below – where I left my wife in the warm car to tramp to the summit in the freezing cold among rabbit warrens and gorse bushes, hoping that she’d let me back in. (She did, eventually.)

Constructed around 70AD, the Roman Baths is one of the best preserved Roman remains in the world (John Wright)

Northeast Somerset’s bit of the Cotswolds is small but surprising

Partly enveloping wonderful Bath, which is great for shopping and mooching. Not only can you visit the Roman Baths where the city’s thermal springs still rise to make even more authentic one of the greatest religious spas of the ancient world, you can actually swim in modern versions of them in that same naturally warm, mineral-rich water. For rambling this southern Cotswold outpost is distinguished by Cleaves Wood, cited by Natural England as “a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest” of 40.38 hectares or 99.78 acres, which means it’s a “Hundred Aker Wood” so you may bump into Winnie the Pooh there!

Eilmer of Malmesbury was an 11th-century English Benedictine monk best known for his early attempt at a gliding flight using wings (John Wright)

Why does everyone look up in Malmesbury?

Wiltshire occupies a modest piece of the Cotswolds shaped like an upside-down seahorse. But who needs more when you’ve got a flying monk? Malmesbury’s tourism future is assured, so seized is it by an incident 1,000 years ago, when abbey monk Eilmer attached wings to arms and feet and glided “from the top of a tower, for the space of a stadium” before crashing (he survived). With tours, trips, displays, plays, merchandising, not to mention endless nutty re-enactments, Malmesbury has Flying Monk Graphics, Flying Monk Group, FlyingMonk travel photography, Flying Monk Brewery, and the Flying Monk Football Ground. Arrive with a bald patch and brown cassock they’ll probably make you mayor.

Get ready to dodge things flying around Warwickshire’s northern Cotswolds too

Actually you will probably be OK. Most of the skirmishes that have occurred around here since the Battle of Edgehill, such as war games, motocross and 6,000 proposed houses, have all been banished by the ever-watchful quietness-loving local guardians.

The Cotswold village of Broadway is renowned for its honey-coloured houses and architecture (John Wright)

Spot houses in Worcestershire’s Cotswolds that aren’t gift shops

Church bells hidden in the forest around here during the Reformation are said to ring at night, and should not be confused with the ringing of cash registers in Broadway, one of the most visited villages in the world. Stone-mullioned windows, wisteria over doorways, “Tourists peer into our windows,” we heard someone say. They were probably less interested in his William Morris collectibles than in finding an “If the smoke alarm goes, your dinner’s ready” fridge magnet.

So the Cotswolds await you. As for the bearded Morris dancer who almost signed me up, we saw him at the street fair later, slumped drunkenly with his drum against the back of a flatbed truck, banging resolutely as his men hopped up and down. (I kept out of sight.)