Cheltenham

Why come through here

Cheltenham is where the useful buses start. Pulhams' 801 leaves Royal Well bus station for Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold and Moreton-in-Marsh station hourly, seven days a week, about 45 minutes to Bourton. On weekdays the first goes at 7.25am and the last at 8.30pm. The 606 leaves Pittville Street at 7.40am and 8.40am and then roughly hourly to 6.20pm from Monday to Saturday for Winchcombe (48 minutes), Broadway and Chipping Campden, with the last bus back from Campden at 5.19pm and no Sunday service. The X52 runs along the A40 to Northleach, Burford, Witney and Oxford six times a day from Monday to Saturday, with two journeys on Sundays in winter and more in summer. The 51 goes about hourly (every two hours on Sundays) to Cirencester. The 66 climbs from the Promenade to Painswick and Stroud every day, about hourly from Monday to Saturday and every two hours on Sundays; the last weekday bus back leaves Stroud at 6.05pm. And the 42 from Clarence Street reaches Tewkesbury about hourly.

The railway station is on Queens Road, on the west side of town, with a taxi rank and a 286-space car park. It is about 2 hours from London Paddington direct, about 40 minutes from Bristol Temple Meads on the CrossCountry trains, which also come down from Birmingham. From the station the D bus runs into the centre. On foot it is a mile or so. By car, Cheltenham is at junctions 10 and 11 of the M5, and the Arle Court park and ride by junction 11 is the place to leave a car: parking is free if you ride the 100 bus to the Promenade, £2 single or £3.50 return, every 15 minutes on weekdays and every 20 on Saturdays and bank holidays, and every 20 minutes on Sundays from 9.25am, the last bus back from the Promenade leaving at 5.05pm. The times are on getting here.

A day in the town

Walk the Promenade first, from the Municipal Offices to the Neptune fountain and into Montpellier. The Wilson, the town's art gallery and museum on Clarence Street, reopened its museum wing on 24 October 2026 after a refurbishment, with free entry to the museum galleries. It is named after Edward Wilson, the Cheltenham doctor who died with Scott in the Antarctic, and the Cheltenham Trust, which runs it, calls its collection of the Arts and Crafts movement the leading one of its kind. It opens Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm and on Sunday from 10am to 4pm, and is closed on Monday.

Holst Victorian House at 4 Clarence Road, a few minutes north, is the terrace where Gustav Holst was born in 1874, kept as a Victorian home with his piano in it: open from Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm, and Sunday afternoons, adult £10 (2026), last entry 3.30pm. Beyond it is Pittville Park and the Pittville Pump Room, the grandest of the town's spa buildings, finished in 1830 after five years' work, about a mile and a quarter north of the Promenade by road. Cheltenham Racecourse is at Prestbury on the north edge, about 3 miles by road from the station, with meetings from October to April; the D bus runs from the station through the centre to the racecourse, and a raceday bus runs from the station. The rest of the town is on Visit Cheltenham (opens in a new tab).

Into the Cotswolds from here

The edge above the town is the Cotswolds, and you can be on it in 20 minutes by car. Cleeve Common is over 400 hectares of limestone grassland on the top of the escarpment, with the Cotswolds' highest point, an Iron Age hill fort and a view to the Malverns and the Black Mountains. The 4-mile loop by Cleeve Cloud starts from the main road at Cleeve Hill, and the quarry car park by the golf club, £2 for 24 hours, is the place to leave a car. Leckhampton Hill, south of the town, is the other side of the view: old quarries, a hill fort, the Devil's Chimney standing off the scarp, and free car parks on Daisy Bank Road for the 4-mile walk round Charlton Kings Common. The Cotswold Way crosses both hills on its way from Winchcombe to Painswick, and the section from Winchcombe to Cleeve Hill ends on the B4632, where Stagecoach's W bus between Cheltenham and Winchcombe stops at Cleeve Hill about hourly from Monday to Saturday.

For a day loop by bus, take the 801 to Bourton in the morning, walk the river path to Lower Slaughter and back, ride on to Stow for the afternoon and come back on the same route. By car the natural circuit runs north-east: Winchcombe and Sudeley Castle, Hailes Abbey, Stanton, Snowshill and Broadway Tower, back over the top by Guiting Power and the A40. The quieter edge is south: Crickley Hill off the A417 and Painswick on the 66.

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When to come

The one week to plan around is the Festival, four days of jump racing in mid-March (Tuesday 16 to Friday 19 March in 2027), when every bed in Cheltenham and for 20 miles around is taken months ahead and priced to match. The November Meeting (13 to 15 November in 2026) and New Year's Day are the lesser race days. Cheltenham Festivals run four more: Jazz over the early May bank holiday weekend, based in Montpellier Gardens (28 April to 3 May in 2027), Science in early June, Music in July and Literature for ten days in mid-October (it ran from 9 to 18 October in 2026). Outside those weeks the town is an easy base. The Cotswolds in November has the November Meeting with the rest of the month.