Cotswolds

As I said in my last post, a good bit of the tourism I did on this trip to England (my 5th) was based on things I'd seen on Pinterest. One day, when I first joined Pinterest, I put the word "door" into the search engine and saw a picture of a door that looked like it was IN a tree. I pinned it into my "must go see someday." When Creedance asked what I wanted to see or do, I figured...let's see if we can figure out where that tree door is!

I googled "door in a tree, England." I found the image of the door, and learned that it was in Stow-on-the-Wold. So I changed the google search from "England" to "Stow-on-the-Wold," and there it was! Thank you, Google and Wikipedia. I love the internets.

We put the address for St. Edward's Parish Church into the GPS and headed towards the Cotswolds. Since Prince(ss) William had already told me that I should go to the Cotswolds, I was pretty excited to see this part of England that she loves so much. I could easily see why. So cute and quaint. So villagish. I love villagish.

What's not to love about Frog Benches?

And office buildings covered in lovely stones?

Or about streams and bridges and spring blossoming all along the way?

And thatched roofs?

We found the tree door. None of my pictures came out National Geographic Worthy. That's okay. The image of it is seared into my heart's eye. It is one of only three doors that I've ever gone and actually hunted down. (The others are THIS one in Paris, and THIS one is Sidi Bou.) I was enthralled by the trees, the blue and red glass above the door, the moss growing on the church, the so-soft-grass-I-wanted-to-lie-down-on-it all around the church. While the door itself is not as spectacular as some I've seen, the way the trees are grown into it are so unique and different, it won my heart. Welcome to top three favorites, Stow-on-the-Wold Door.

Afterwards, we popped into a tea room for some "cream tea." I thought that meant there was cream in the tea. No so! Cream tea means clotted cream (better than butter) and preserves on scones with tea.

That cream was so good I ordered a second scone and bought some cream to bring back to France with me. If you ever go to England, I recommend cream tea and the Cotswolds.

Better yet...cream team in the Cotswolds.