Love the Cotswolds: the care code

The Cotswolds are not full. A handful of villages are, for a few hours on a few dozen days a year, and the people who live in them bear it. Bibury has 627 residents and up to 20,000 visitors on a peak weekend; Bourton-on-the-Water sees about 10,000 people a day at the height of summer; more than 350 cars were booked for illegal parking in Castle Combe across the summer of 2025. The Cotswolds National Landscape's management plan for 2025 to 2030 puts it plainly: tourism is spread unevenly across the Cotswolds, a few honeypot areas suffer its impacts, and other communities could benefit from more of it. The care code is our answer, five promises that cost you nothing and give you a better day. The reasons for each are below, with the sources.

Come early or late

Be in the famous village before 10am or after 5pm, and it is a different place. The crowds in Bourton, Bibury and Castle Combe arrive with the coaches in late morning and leave by late afternoon; Castle Combe's parish council says its busiest times are midday, bank holidays and the summer months, its quietest early mornings, late afternoons, weekdays and winter, and that the average visit lasts just over an hour. The councils have priced the day the same way: Bourton's Rissington Road car park has been free before 10am since 2026 and charges until 8pm, so an early start is free and a long afternoon is £7.30. The light is better early and the people who live on The Street in Bibury get their mornings. When to visit the Cotswolds has the months as well as the hours.

Park where you are meant to, or come by bus

Use the car park, even when it is a walk, because the verge you would use is someone's gateway, the fire engine's turning space or the footpath. The county council issued 651 parking penalty notices in Bibury in 2025 against 28 in 2019, up to about £45,000 of fines that still did not cover the £4,000 a month the enforcement costs, and the parish council's chair says it is needed to keep the roads open to the emergency services (Punchline Gloucester, 5 August 2026 (opens in a new tab)). Gloucestershire County Council closed Bibury's central coach bays in May 2025 for a two-coach, ten-minute clearway, and in March 2026 set aside £175,000 for a scheme to manage the crowds, with pay-and-display, raised kerbs and more enforcement among the measures proposed, which it expects to recover over three years from parking charges and fines; when we checked on 27 October 2026 the measures were still proposals. Lower Slaughter has barred coaches since 1995; Castle Combe keeps them in the car park at the top of the hill. Every ticket at Bourton's Rissington Road car park carries a 60p tourism levy that helps pay for the village warden. The National Landscape's management plan says the limited and poorly joined-up public transport leaves 'a heavy reliance on car usage' and that transport providers should be supported to 'encourage a car-free visitor experience'; the 801 bus from Moreton-in-Marsh station, hourly every day on Pulhams' timetable from May 2026, is the first real answer to that in the north. Parking has every car park and buses every route.

Keep to the path and shut the gate

A public footpath is a right to cross a field on the line of the path, not a right to the field, and the Cotswold landscape is a working one: the wold tops are sheep and barley, the valley meadows are cattle, and a gate left open loses a flock onto the road. The Countryside Code's rule is to leave gates and property as you find them, keep to the marked route, take litter home and keep dogs under control, and the Cotswolds National Landscape adds not to block gateways or driveways when you park (visiting, Cotswolds National Landscape (opens in a new tab)). The drystone walls are the other thing: one person climbing one for the photograph above Bibury or Snowshill is a repair a farmer pays for. Dogs have a page of their own, because the rule near livestock is law: dogs in the Cotswolds.

Buy something local

Spend something in the village you walk through, because a village that is photographed and not bought from loses its shop, and then its pub. The management plan's Caring for the Cotswolds scheme exists because visitor money does not otherwise reach the landscape it uses: it 'will raise awareness of the CNL and generate funds from visitors to directly help to look after it', paying for habitat work, access and heritage repair, through a visitor giving scheme in which the tourism businesses that join it collect voluntary donations from their guests, on the bill, at booking or on the trail. The surer way is the till: the village shop at Coln St Aldwyns, a loaf from the bakery in the town you are staying in, the Saturday farmers' market in Stroud, a bag of apples from Hayles Fruit Farm, a pint in the pub rather than a coffee from the car. The businesses on this site are the ones we have checked and would send a friend to.

Try the next village

The famous village is rarely the best one in its valley, and the plan's own policy UE3.7 is that 'the activity and impacts of tourism should be spread more evenly across the CNL'. See Bibury at nine, then walk up the Coln to Coln St Aldwyns, where the river is the same and the crowds are not; see Bourton, then follow the Windrush past the Slaughters to Naunton; see Broadway, then go up to Snowshill or along to Stanton. The full list, with the walk or the bus between each pair, is the Cotswolds without the crowds.

The quieter alternatives

For Bibury, Coln St Aldwyns, two miles up the river, with a village shop and the New Inn. For Bourton and the Slaughters, Naunton and Guiting Power, up the Windrush, each with a pub and a green and no coach bay. For Castle Combe, Biddestone, a few miles east, with a green, a pond and the White Horse. For Broadway, Stanton and Snowshill on the hill above; in Stanton the parish asks you to use the car park by the cricket ground rather than the street. For Chipping Campden, Blockley. For Stow, the Swells, just down the hill, or Northleach, a wool town with a church as good as any and the X52 and 855 buses through the Market Place.

How we check our facts

Every place guide and listing carries the date its facts were last checked, shown on the page, and the practical pages under Plan say 'checked' with a date in the text. The sources are the operators and councils themselves: the bus times come from Pulhams' and Stagecoach's timetables, the car park charges from the councils' tariff pages, the dog rules from GOV.UK and the landowners, the visitor numbers from Gloucestershire County Council's own reports; we do not take a fact from another guide, a review site or a forum, and a fact we cannot source comes out rather than staying because it is probably still right. When something changes, or we get it wrong, the page is corrected and the correction is noted at the foot of it, and every page has a link to tell us. How we research and check sets out the whole process. About the Cotswolds says who we are.