The Cotswolds

When I arrived in Cheltenham, my hosts took me out to see some live stand-up comedy. All but one of the performers were pretty damned funny. Some of the lines that stuck with me were: "I wanted to kill someone and some people want to die: why can't there be a system to get us together?" and a gem spoken after determining that two people with notable attractiveness disparity who were sitting next to each other were not in fact dating: "If you were together I'd suck his cock just to taste you."

There was little in Cheltenham itself that interested me, except for a statue of Gustav Holst (the composer of The Planets Suite). It was mainly a base from which I could head out to the lovely old villages of the Cotswold region, an area full of medieval villages. 

First I headed to Tewksbury to see its abbey and timber-framed houses. 

The buses were on a hub system out of Cheltenham, so I passed through it again on the way to Gloucester. Upon reaching the city, I was struck by the architecture of the St. Nicholas Church. 

Of course, the cathedral was even more impressive.

I loved the curves of the support structures.

The beautifully ornate cloister was used for the filming of an area of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies.

After another bus exchange in Cheltenham I arrived in Painswick. It was full of pretty stone cottages.

Back in Cheltenham yet again, I wandered up the promenade to a park build around an old overly grand pumphouse. Then I caught yet another bus to Swindon. On the way I looked out the window at Circencester, a Cotswold town that hadn't quite made the cut but which I think I would have enjoyed even more than the towns I actually visited. So it goes.

There isn't anything to see in Swindon. At all. In fact, the bus driver actually asked me, an obvious tourist, "Why would you want to come here?" The answer was that there are no couch surf hosts in the small towns near the Avebury stone circle. My generous and entertaining host was an American working abroad. Over the dinner he provided, we discussed travels while listening to international music. Afterward we listened to some Lewis Black routines while playing with his kitten. 

I told him many of my blog followers would get more excited by the diminutive feline than any other picture of my trip. What say you? Are you not entertained?