On a quest to explore the country's most glorious roads, Annunciata Elwes takes the wheel in the North Cotswolds.
If you’re looking for Britain’s most scene drives, it’s hard to go wrong in an idyllic AONB where honey-coloured stone enhances rolling hills wherever you turn.
Chipping Campden’s ‘most perfect high street in England’ is a good place to start; perhaps follow the Cotswold Way towards Willersey and Broadway, stopping at Broadway Tower for a glimpse of 16 counties, before humming down the A44 to Moreton-in-Marsh at the crossroads of Roman Fosse Way or forking south to Stow-on-the-Wold, the Slaughters with their sweet footbridges on the Eye, and Bourton-on-the-Water, known for straddling the Windrush and its museum’s vintage cars.
The little lanes through sheep-speckled fields here are in no hurry, but creep lazily south to Northleach and Cirencester, or east via Daylesford to join the A44 and Chipping Norton, home to a very good literary festival, plus bucolic-chic Soho Farmhouse.
This is mellow land and drivers should go where the breeze takes them — there’s usually a good pub lunch to be had along the way; the 16th-century The King’s Head Inn at Bledington, for example, or The Swan at Ascott-under-Wychwood, with its whitewashed beams and many bell jars filled with wildflowers.
Toyota Hilux: The vehicle built for farmers’ fields, school runs and surviving the end of the world
Between lockdowns last year, James Fisher took a Toyota Hilux fishing. He was impressed.
