The Cotswolds in Autumn

Paddington Railway Station (meet by the main ticket office - it's near Platform 1 )

Guided by Simon

Adult: £129 · Students & Seniors: £124 · Children: £86

Walk Times

Day	Walk Type	Start Time	End Time
24 October 2026	Day Trip	9 am	7.20 pm	Summer
7 November 2026	Day Trip	9 am	7.20 pm	Winter	Reserve Online

The Cotswolds. A dream of England.

Slow down. Wander. Get back. Another time. Another world.

The England you hoped was still there.

Your Cotswolds Day: The Essentials

Meet Simon: 9 am at Paddington Railway Station, by the main ticket office, near Platform 1.

Back in London: Scheduled arrival at Paddington, 7.25 pm.

Small numbers. Something special. Places are limited, so early booking is advisable. The trip needs a small minimum number of bookings to go ahead.

Booking and payment: Your booking secures your place, subject to the trip going ahead. We’ll send you a payment link a few days before departure.

The price:
Adults: £129
Students & Seniors and Adult Loyalty Card holders: £124
Students and Senior with the Loyalty Card: £119
Children: £86

Everything included: Transport, guiding and admission fees. The only extras are lunch and drinks, including coffee.

Late bookings: Subject to availability, bookings close at 6 pm two days before departure. Payment is due by noon the following day.

Memories make us rich.

Welcome to the Cotswolds.

A landscape of rolling hills, honey-coloured limestone, ancient churches, picture-perfect villages and little country lanes that seem to have escaped the 21st century altogether.

It’s one of England’s most beautiful corners. And we’d love to show it to you.

This is a proper day out. A chance to leave the bustle of London behind and discover a very different England. An England of village greens, winding streets, centuries-old buildings and wonderfully photogenic little places.

And, being London Walks, there’s more to it than pretty scenery. There are stories. History. People. The sort of things you’d never know just driving through.

A day in the English countryside

The Cotswolds are famous for their villages. And deservedly so.

Houses built of warm golden stone. Gardens overflowing with flowers. Churches that have stood for centuries. Narrow lanes, lovely old bridges, little streams and views that seem to go on for ever.

But there’s another Cotswolds, too.

A place shaped by the wool trade. By medieval merchants and agricultural wealth. By the men and women who lived and worked here long before these villages became some of the most photographed places in England.

That’s the pleasure of seeing the Cotswolds with a knowledgeable guide.

You get the beautiful setting. But you also get the stories behind it.

And there’s time to enjoy the place. To look around. To take photographs. To soak up that very special Cotswold atmosphere.

Where we go

Some we drive through or past. Some we get our and walk. And tarry in. The ones we go by, it’s not whizzing by on the motorway. You’re going to see a lot of Cotswolds countryside and a lot of Cotswolds villages.

To wit: our train journey takes us to Moreton-in-Marsh. We walk through Moreton-in-Marsh. Meet up with our local coach. We drive through some of most beautiful scenery in the Cotswolds. Correction: in the world. Tick ’em off. Here are some of the Cotswolds villages we go through: Broadway, Willersey (Willersey is on the northern edge of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty),  Aston-sub-Edge, Weston-sub-Edge. We get off the coach at the top of a picturesque hill and walk down into Chipping Campden. We walk through Chipping Campden. And Chipping Campden is where we have lunch. Then it’s back on the coach and a supremely pleasant drive through more exquisite Cotswolds countryside. We go past the famous Broadway Tower (an iconic landmark on top of the beautiful Cotswolds escarpment).

Then it’s still more Cotswolds countryside, wafted along in our coach. To Upper Slaughter. At Upper Slaughter we stroll down into the valley of the River Eye. We walk along the River Eye to Loweer Slaughter. It’s a walk through English countryside paradise. It’s about a mile in length. But if anybody doesn’t want to walk it, the coach will take you from Upper Slaughter to Lower Slaughter. In Lower Slaughter there’s the old mill.

And a wonderful church. And an art exhibition. And Lower Slaughter rejoices in the platonic ideal of a country pub. Belabouring the obvious here, but yes, we stop there. Then it’s on to Stow-on-the-Wold. After Stow-on-the-Wold there’s more Cotswolds countryside. We go through Bledington. Yet more honey-coloured stone, cottages, water, a village green, a little footbridge, a church tower, narrow lanes. And to finish, Kingham, in the Evenlode Valley. Country Life once chose Kingham as “England’s favourite village.” At Kingham, happy, ripe with what we’ve seen and done and visited on our Cotswolds cup-runneth-over day, we catch the train back to London. Our scheduled arrival at Paddington Station is 7.25 pm.

Coda

Each stop has its own character, its own pleasures and its own stories.

Some of the loveliest moments are the unexpected ones. A little lane. A wonderfully crooked old house. A glimpse through a gateway. A village view that sends everyone reaching for their cameras.

This is not just about ticking places off a list.

It’s about enjoying them.

YOUR GUIDE

Meet Simon. One of the best reasons to choose this trip.

Beautiful countryside is one thing. Having someone who knows it, loves it and knows how to bring it to life is quite another.

Enter Simon.

A London Walks guide for 25 years, a former actor, a seasoned traveller and a wonderfully engaging storyteller.

Simon has something else going for him. He attracts an extraordinary number of five-star reviews. And given the calibre of the London Walks guiding team, that’s saying something.

He takes care of the arrangements, brings the villages and their stories to life, and makes sure you get the most out of your day.

In short, you’re in exceptionally good hands.

Don’t just take our word for it. Read what his walkers say.

Click here for the full Summer ’26 programme of out-of-town trips (we have day trips to Cambridge and to Oxford & the Cotswolds as well as the all-day trip to The Cotswolds).

Let’s Go to the Cotswolds

Short read: The achingly beautiful Cotswolds…

Good listen: here’s an interview with Guide Simon in which he goes into considerable detail about where The Cotswolds trip goes, what happens on it, why it’s special, etc.

Medium read: We take you places where you’ll want to stay. The Cotswolds of thatched roofs and honey-coloured stone and cottages wreathed in wisteria and honeysuckle. The Cotswolds of stone bridges and old mills and millponds. The Cotswolds of storybook villages and matchless flower gardens. The Cotswolds of… well, of rural England at its best. 

Long read: High-end, extremely high-quality tours. That’s what we do. The catch – you’re going to like the catch – is we do them at a very reasonable price.* If you’re thinking of going to The Cotswolds and you’ve found your way to this page you’ve drawn to an inside straight and hit it.

To get this into perspective, run a couple of comparisons. Sure, there are other ways of getting to The Cotswolds. You can hire a driver guide. Cost you hundreds of pounds and you’ll have less time in The Cotswolds because battling through London traffic and pounding along the motorway takes a lot longer than going by train. You can hire a car and drive up there yourself. Same time constraints and it’ll cost you a whole lot more than going with us. Car rentals aren’t cheap. And that’s not to mention the toll on your nerves that goes with the territory of driving in unfamiliar places. If it were a steeplechase – Simon’s savvy and years of experience over against you behind the wheel of a rental car and being completely unfamiliar with the course – well, I know which horse I’d back.

And as for coach tours to the Cotswolds – well, you might save £5 to £10 but it’s a textbook example of a false economy. Going by rail is much faster and much more comfortable than going by coach. Battling through London traffic and grinding out the miles on the motorway – well, your £5 to £10 “saved” is going to cost you precious hours in The Cotswolds. It’s no saving at all. Divide the cost by the number of hours you get in The Cotswolds you’ll find that the per-hour cost of going on a coach tour is a whole lot more than the per-hour cost of going with us.

Nobody else does it the way we do it. They can’t. They’re locked into their expensive “infrastructure” – their coaches, their cars, etc. Low-information tourist hordes don’t do it the way we do it. They would if they were lucky enough to find us. But they don’t find us. We’re not on their radar. Their loss. But you’re not them. You’re not low-information tourists, you’re savvy, discerning independents. You have found us. You’ve won. You’re going to have the best possible trip to The Cotswolds. Good going.

*The key is our low fixed costs – i.e., running London Walks off our kitchen table. That translates into extremely high-quality tours at a very reasonable price.

It’s Fastly Superior – We Go by Train 

Bored by traffic? Board the train. At Paddington Railway Station (see above).

 

Anything else? Yes, attention to detail. The small things that make a big difference. When we’re in the villages the driver stays with the coach. You can leave your gear in the coach with complete confidence that it’ll be ok. I said we use the local coach to village hop – but two of the villages – Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter – are very close together. Some of you, some of us, will choose to walk from one to the other. Others won’t. That’s ok, they’ll take the coach. It works a treat.

In sum: it’s fun; it’s fascinating; it’s efficient; it’s relaxed; Simon’s the perfect host – he takes the worry out of it). It just works. It’ll be one of the best – one of the most memorable – days of your life. Memories make us rich.

A Day in the Cotswolds – a Bridge to Golden Memories

 Affordable?

For sure. About a tenth of what it would cost you to go by driver-guide.