What JD Vance really thinks of the Cotswolds

This month we welcome a guest correspondent who gives his reflections following a visit to our area

Life in the Cotswolds: A Hillbilly’s Guide to Honey-Coloured Heaven

When I first set foot in the Cotswolds, I thought I’d stumbled into a film set for Lord of the Rings if it had been directed by the National Trust. The stone is the colour of butter left too long in the sun, the pubs are older than my country, and the sheep have a sort of aristocratic disdain, as if they know your net worth and disapprove.

Now, I’m no stranger to rural life. I grew up around hollers, rusted Fords, and raccoons with bad attitudes. But your Cotswolds and its surroundings are rural in a completely different register. In Kentucky, when you tell folks you’re “going into town,” that means you’re buying brake fluid and shotgun shells. In the Cotswolds, it means you’re heading to a farm shop that sells truffle oil and bespoke chutney for £8.95 a jar.

The Good Stuff

First, the architecture. Every house looks like it could host a BBC detective drama where the vicar has an alibi but the goat doesn’t. There’s a comfort in walking down Burford High Street knowing the buildings will probably outlive the internet. The pubs are cosy, the beer is warm but in a way you’ll defend by your third pint, and the Sunday meals are enough to make a Methodist consider conversion to Anglicanism just for the pot roast after the service.

The people are unfailingly polite, which is both charming and suspicious. In the States, politeness is often a prelude to asking you for money or to borrow your truck. Here, people will thank you for holding a door as though you just saved their child from a runaway tractor.

The Bad Stuff

Now, I love a good walk, but Cotswolds walking is a contact sport. “Public footpath” sounds welcoming until you find yourself in a field with a bull staring at you like you’ve interrupted his lunch. The weather, too, is an elaborate joke played by the Almighty—constant drizzle that feels like God’s personal misting system for heritage stonework.

And don’t get me started on property prices. In the Cotswolds, a “modest fixer-upper” means a three-bedroom cottage priced at roughly the GDP of a small Caribbean nation. I once asked an estate agent if there were affordable options. She laughed so hard she nearly dropped her artisanal oat milk flat white.

Final Thoughts

Despite all that, the Cotswolds get under your skin. The hills roll like they’ve been hand-ironed by angels. The smell of woodsmoke in the autumn makes you want to buy a dog and a Barbour jacket immediately. And in Burford, the bridge over the Windrush isn’t just a crossing—it’s a postcard that you happen to be standing in.

So yes, the Cotswolds are pricey, damp, and occasionally guarded by hostile livestock. But they’re also absurdly beautiful. And if you ever see me in a tweed cap, sipping tea by a roaring fire here in The Farmer’s Dog, just know: the hillbilly has gone native.

J D Vance (possibly)