Wyck Rissington

We spent the whole of yesterday on the road again. 3 hours of driving in the dark from Glencoe back to Inverness. We took the 12.30pm flight to London and headed out to The Cotswolds. M40 was slightly congested but nothing compared to when we got onto the stretch of A40 from Oxford to Cheltenham. Why would there be a traffic standstill at 4pm on a Thursday in The Cotswolds? Is there some Christmas antique auction happening somewhere that we were not aware of? Well, there is a simpler explanation to this - Roundabouts. The A40 is generously planted with roundabouts. Talk about disruptive technology!

And so we arrived at the little village of Wyck Rissington. Yes my Singaporean phonics based English pronunciation fails me in this quaint part of England. In the dark, I sensed that there is only one road traversing this village. We must have made up the entire winter traffic passing through this village as we drove up and down, and up and down, in the rain to find the cottage we booked. It doesn't help that some houses have names instead of numbers. And where there were numbers they didn't seem to run in sequence.  Why did I not learn from the experience in Scotland? Just call the owner.

Even in the dark, you could tell that this is going to be a warm homely cottage. In the garden, we were greeted by an apple tree. My wife joked about making apple pies. Climbers growing on the exterior walls. On the inside is what you would want when you come in from a long day of driving in the dark cold raining English winter. If you are Instagram crazy, you would go Instagram crazy. Probably the only thing missing is a dog and a cat, in that order of priority, and maybe sheep on the lawn. I will be giving some feedback to the owner. 

I am tearing my hair out trying to plan what we do the next couple of days. So many villages but so little time. Completely defeats the purpose of wanting to be here in the first place, to chill. When I asked someone whether it was worth visiting The Cotswolds in the winter, the person wanted to manage my expectation. The gardens would not be blooming at this time of the year, so the person said that people take long lunches during winter. Well, to warm up over a wood fire over a long lunch is a pretty good way to chill, even if it is a bit ironic. But from what we saw when we passed through one of the villages yesterday night, I suspect The Cotswolds would be out in its Christmas best.