About Cotswolds Info

Cotswolds Info is an independent guide to the Cotswolds: every town and village from Chipping Campden to Castle Combe, the walks, the sights and their stories, and the places to stay and eat. It is published by Cherwell Studio, which also publishes Banburyshire, its sister guide to north Oxfordshire.

How we research

Every page starts from primary sources: the business itself, the venue or the organiser, the council, the bus and rail operators, Historic England's list, the Victoria County History and the Cotswolds National Landscape. Facts a visitor acts on carry the date we checked them, and the sources are recorded so they can be checked again. When something is wrong, tell us through the contact page or at [email protected], and we correct it.

We say how we know. Most pages are researched first and visited after, and a page never claims a visit that has not happened. Our walks follow routes that walkers have published; we walk each one ourselves and date it when we have. A listing's facts come from the business's own website, or from the owner through the portal. Where those are silent, we may use a booking platform's own listing data, such as check-in times or a minimum stay, and on walks the conditions that walkers have recently reported, such as mud or a diverted path; the page then says where the fact comes from.

How the guide is paid for

Local businesses can join as members, which is invoiced, to keep their own listing up to date and add offers. Some links to hotels, holiday cottages and tours go to booking sites that pay us a commission if you book; those pages say so, and the links are marked. Neither changes what we write: a place is in the guide, and described as it is, whether or not it pays or earns us anything. A member's page never carries links to other businesses or booking sites.

Strange Things

Beside the guides are the stories the brochures leave out: the Campden Wonder, the ghost of Charles I, the lost lord of Minster Lovell, and the customs and folklore of a region that has been lived in for a long time. They are told as the villages tell them, with what the record says kept apart from the legend.