FOOTLOOSE
Country roads
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If you prefer old world charm, Minster Lovell is the place for you. DR. SANJIVA WIJESINHA
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Photo: Dr. Sanjiva Wijesinha
Quiet grace: The Minster Lovell church and hall.
Some of the prettiest places one can visit in England are the little villages in the Cotswold countryside west of London, between Oxford and Gloucester.
Just over an hour’s drive from Heathrow airport mostly along the M40 motorway, Minster Lovell is one of those typical English villages with quaint, thatched cottages and classic country gardens full of colourful spring flowers. There is an old village pub situated at the junction of two winding old roads on which cars are few and far between — and even an ancient mill by the side of a small but fast flowing stream, surrounded by daffodil-lined banks and dandelion-dotted meadows.
Savouring stillness
Strolling along the narrow country road from the pub, one comes across the cold and well preserved 14th century village church — which surprisingly is still used for regular Sunday services. It has beautiful stained-glass windows, a marble effigy of a long deceased knight, and a musty smell of antiquity inside it — the sort of place about which one can say “there’s peace and holy quiet here”. Wandering through the churchyard, you should stop to examine the gravestones both ancient and modern, some covered with fresh flowers and others with thick moss and lichens — monuments which could well have inspired Gray to pen another elegy.
Behind the church lie the ruins of what once was Minster Lovell Hall, a manor to which generations of lords were born and where at various times kings of England were reputed to have been wined and dined.
Ideal to unwind
This quaint old village is an ideal place in which to spend a couple of days to rest, relax and unwind. It is tailor made for leisurely long walks along footpaths that skirt ancient fences and olde English styles and unpolluted car-less country roads. These roads were made for walking! If you prefer more sedentary but no less pleasurable activities you can spend a beautiful spring afternoon seated in the garden of the old inn, sipping respectively a pint of draught English beer and sweet cider, listening to the chirping of the birds in the trees and allowing the sun to warm your bones as you share a ploughman’s lunch.
The village provides a convenient base from which to tour the Cotswold countryside as well as visit places like Oxford, Blenheim Palace, and even Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford upon Avon — in all of which accommodation can prove “frightfully dear” at this time of year. The small hotel in Minster Lovell where we stayed provided comfortable accommodation — good value at £30 per person for bed and breakfast.
Hearty, not healthy
One warning though: the breakfast provided in most hotels in England is the standard English fare of bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms and bread with everything being fried (including the bread!). With each mouthful of my morning meal I could visualise the cholesterol congealing in my coronary arteries. No wonder they describe it as a hearty English breakfast; it is guaranteed to go straight to the heart!
If you do plan to travel to England, you couldn’t do much better than spending the first couple of days in a typical English village such as this getting over jet lag, walking along those old country roads or enjoying a pint or two of good English beer and easing leisurely into the local time zone.
It certainly provides a healthy start to your holiday, just as long as you avoid the deep fried bread.
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