England #14 - Bourton-on-the-Water and Birdland in The England Chronicles - September 2024

(Sunday September 15, 2024)

After Bibury, we headed on to Bourton-on-the-Water, which was about 15 miles up the Fosse Way/A429. The Fosse Way is an ancient Roman road built during the first and second centuries AD that runs 230 miles from Exeter to Lincoln. It’s in all kinds of bits and pieces now, but we drove this section of it every day we were there. Since this piece is also part of the A road it was easy traveling, unlike some of the sections appear to be. There’s also the remains of a large and elaborate Roman Villa very close to our Airbnb which we visited later in the week. 

Bourton-on-the-Water Is absolutely gorgeous. It’s another “prettiest village in England” and is called the Venice of the Cotswolds because of the beautiful River Windrush with its five low stone bridges that meanders through the middle of town. The bridges were built between the mid 1600s and 1953, and are very scenic.  Bourton-on-the-Water is also a big tourist spot - apparently it has around 300,000 visitors each year, although there are only 4000 residents. But it is much more spread out than Bibury, and has lots of shops and pubs and restaurants so it didn’t feel crowded at all. It also felt like a real town and not a pretend movie-set village like poor Bibury did. 

Bourton-on-the-Water was so easy to get to from where we were staying in Chedworth and so gorgeous that we ended up visiting it four times. We kept saying sad goodbyes to it when we left, then going right back in the next day or two! The main street is maybe a mile off the A429, and there’s a big parking area that is a breeze to get to and is close to the shops and river. And the town has a surprising number of fun attractions in addition to just wandering around the river and the shops and the pubs. We went to Birdland Park and Gardens, the Cotswolds Motoring Museum, and the Miniature Village, which is an amazing teeny little reproduction of the entire town. 

This first visit was a little rainy, especially later in the day, but that just made it even more atmospheric!  

A few of these are from later days, hence the blue skies. My pictures are very out of order due to some being taken with my phone and some with my Canon. The times and dates do not agree. 

On this first visit, we went to the astonishingly fun Birdland Park & Gardens. Kim was dying to see Birdland, being a big fan of birds, and I was really glad we went too. It’s nine acres of gardens with over 500 birds from all over the world, plus a woodland area that features life sized dinosaur replicas, hilariously. It was a very reasonable 12 pounds for admission, and well worth it. 

The penguins were my favorite. Birdland has England’s only group of King penguins and we got to see the daily feeling display. Before the feeding they were just standing around like slightly bored people waiting for an event.

The tall ones are the King penguins. The shorter ones are Humboldt penguins. The Humboldt penguins were trouble, although they look very calm here. They would tease the King penguins and steal their fish. 

The King penguins had name tags. Frank and Spike seemed to be the main stars. 

Spike is actually the Number One star - he was hand-reared at Birdland and met David Attenborough. He is also in loooooove with the woman who does the feeding display informational session. It was very sweet- he always stands there gazing up at her adoringly as she speaks. 

The penguins have a nice village and you can watch them swim. 

And there were zillions of other birds as well. 

This guy is a Southern Ground Hornbill, native to Africa. He came right up to the fence and stared at us with his impressively long-lashed eyes. He followed us as we walked past his enclosure. A bit later on we came back the same way, and he rushed up to us again. He was carrying something. To my horror I realized…it was a half eaten yellow chick with its poor little legs hanging down out of his mouth, and clearly he was presenting it to us as a gift!  

“Oh, THANK you!” we said! “We just had dinner and couldn’t eat another bite, but that is so thoughtful!!!”

And then we rushed away in horror!

But despite cannibalistic birds who had crushes on us, Birdland was well worth a visit! By then it was quite late in the day, and although we’d lied to the long-eyelash bird  about having already had dinner, we were in fact quite hungry. So we went to the Kingsbridge Riverside. I had a veggie burger & fries (and apparently a few onion rings) along with a bitter beer that I failed to take a picture or note the name of. I did verify that they were all delicious, though.

  Next up, more little Cotswolds villages!