icture the quintessential English village. Chances are you’re thinking of a hamlet of honeycomb-coloured cottages, all thatched roofs and rose gardens. There’ll be a cobbled street, with a tinkling river running alongside, and a creaking pub with an open fire, where you can warm yourself after a bracing walk through the green hills on the horizon. Chances are you’re thinking of the North Cotswolds. The Cotswold Hills stretch for nearly 800 square miles across the heart of England, but it is the chocolate-box charm of its northern villages that draws visitors from all over the world. Trying to pick the prettiest is a lifelong challenge for some, but the villages are so clustered together in this bucolic corner of the country that you don’t have to settle on just one.
