Gloucestershire

‘Tis the Season: Christmas Decorations

It’s no secret that I love Christmas. I don’t go too overboard but I do like to decorate the tree and the living room with ornaments I’ve bought on my travels. I often do a round up on Instagram of the newest ones but I thought this year I’d do a post here now that I’ve started travelling a little again. They’re usually a cheap(ish) souvenir and small enough not to take up a lot of room in your bag. The first one is this wonderful (and actually quite expensive) Welsh dragon I bought recently at Conwy Castle in Wales. [Starting next year will be a whole series of posts about what I got up to in a week’s exploration of North Wales – spoiler, it was a lot!]. Although I live in England I’ve been learning Welsh via Duolingo since the first UK Covid lockdown as I thought it would be nice to learn one of the Home Nation’s languages, Wales being the country I’ve visited the most. Amusingly one of the first words you learn is draig, the Welsh for dragon.

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St Mary’s Church, Sudeley

The lovely, and somewhat compact, St Mary’s Church in the grounds of Sudeley Castle is the final resting place of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth wife and the only one to survive him. She is the only queen to be buried on private land.

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Sudeley Castle and Gardens

Sudeley Castle is famous as being the home to Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last wife and the only one to survive him. It is also the place where Lady Jane Grey, Katherine’s ward and Queen herself for only 9 days before her execution at the Tower of London, resided for some time. Lady Jane is probably my favourite historical figure, someone I’ve been fascinated by since a school trip to Bradgate Park, Lady Jane’s supposed birthplace, so I was very interested to walk the same hallways she did.

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Chedworth Roman Villa

Chedworth Roman Villa is one of the largest Roman villas in Britain and was rediscovered by the Victorians over 150 years ago. Now in the care of the National Trust it’s a really impressive site allowing you access to the mosaic floors so typical of Roman buildings, as well as the bathhouse rooms.

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The Rack Isle, Bibury

The Rack Isle is directly opposite Arlington Row, which I previously wrote about here. It’s a low-lying meadow which gets its name from the racks where wool would have been hung to dry after being washed at Arlington Row.

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Arlington Row, Bibury

Arlington Row in Bibury is apparently one of the most photographed streets in the Cotswolds. The Row is a set of cottages looked after by the National Trust that were built in 1380 as a wool store and then converted into weaver’s cottages in the 17th century.

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St Mary’s Church, Bibury

On a recent holiday to the Cotswolds we spent some time in the picturesque village of Bibury in Gloucestershire. One of the places we had a look around was St Mary’s Church, a Grade I listed building.

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Tewkesbury Abbey

Tewkesbury Abbey may look like a Cathedral but it is actually one of the largest parish churches in the country. This building is over 900 years old, although a church has been on the site for over 1,200 years.

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