The Romantic Road by Simon Heptinstall
Featured Hotel in Cheltenham
Thirty Two
See all hotels in Cheltenham >
We hadn’t spoken for an hour. I was driving, gripping the steering wheel staring grimly ahead through the drizzle. She was sitting in the passenger seat pretending to be engrossed by the map on her lap, tapping her finger annoyingly on the dashboard.
Taking ‘The Romantic Road’ is asking for trouble. It’s supposed to be an archetypal idyllic route through the Cotswolds - a sort of lover’s lane that goes on for 100 miles. The un-ending sequence of quaint villages and unspoilt countryside is supposed to stir the passions, gird the loins... make you feel all gooey.
In fact, it’s a dubious marketing concept - a new way for tourist boards and hoteliers to flog short breaks in the area between Cheltenham and Burford. They’ve produced a flimsy booklet with a guided route map and suggest romantic places to stay and eat.
They tell me it has been a huge success.
And at first we fell under its corny spell. We prepared for our weekend on the ‘Romantic Road’ with saucy chuckles that Sid James would’ve been proud of. Romance seemed to have become a euphemism for an indulgently dirty weekend. We winked at the hotel’s offer of chocolate body paint and massage oils. Breakfast in bed was mentioned. With a coy nudge.
Yet after just half a day we were enemies beyond counselling. The Romantic Road had failed us miserably. Why?
The typically sad small town English hotel shoulders much of the blame. From the promised glass of punch on arrival that never materialised to the breakfast table decorated with caked-on dinner from the night before, it was a five-star passion killer.
The grey-carpeted room was as romantic as a prefabricated concrete garage - twin beds pushed together, a view into the kitchen of the bungalow next door and a mouldy bathroom that was so small it took a contortionist to sit on the toilet.
We gazed heartbrokenly at fittings held on with blu-tac, flaking ceiling paint and a well-thumbed copy of Gone with the Wind. Far from collapsing into a pink mist of love, the only words we exchanged were: “What’s that smell?”
And there wasn’t a glass of champagne or a vase of flowers in sight. Dinner was candle-lit only if you count the night-light in the ashtray. We had to ask for it to be lit and for the fifties rock and roll tape to be turned down.
By the time I found the owner I couldn’t dare raise the question of the missing chocolate body paint.
We’d long since gone off the idea anyway. At least I think we had. We weren’t speaking again. Perhaps it was the disappointment. Romance is an easy fantasy to puncture, especially in suburban Cheltenham.
But I already knew the Cotswolds and sure enough, it’s an area of pretty countryside and twee villages – but surely it's more green wellingtonshire, less Cupid's own country?
The Romantic Road takes you on a loop from Cheltenham to little-known spots that are like Hollywood versions of English villages. At Little Barrington for example, an old iron water pump stands on the village green and a tethered goat grazes in front of the creeper-covered post office which is housed in an old smithy.
The village green at Sapperton is bordered by some topiary peacocks taller than the roof tops of the honey stone cottages. In the tiny church at Swinbrook six members of the Fettiplace family are unusually commemorated in full-size marble reclining on their sides and elbows gazing, not up to heaven, but longingly outside the church. The Romantic Road leads to some fantastic country pubs: the Bear at Bisley, the Mill at Withington and the New Inn at Coln St Adwyns. Tweedy locals and bearded back-packers mix around crackling log fires, old wooden tables and black-boards chalked with hearty grub.
And we knew from previous visits that there ARE some gorgeous little places to stay: the almost over-cute half-timbered Burford House B&B in Burford High Street has four-posters and Victorian bathrooms and the Hotel on the Park in Cheltenham is a sumptuous Regency experience.
Maybe it’s just us - perhaps everyone else would find the Romantic Road the viagra of voyages. But when something is labelled so decisively ‘Romantic’ - it seems almost a challenge to prove it wrong.
In Lechlade the Book directs you to the leafy lane that inspired Shelley to write 'A Summer Evening Churchyard'. Unfortunately, 180 years on, we found it now leads to the school car park. The church is covered in scaffolding and the New Inn where Shelley stayed has been modernised. It now serves "golden fried scampi and French fries".
We also found the bizarrely described "romantic police station" in Fairford and the “somewhat unromantic electricity generator” near Sheepscombe. We tracked down the George Inn, where Nell Gwynn and Charles II canoodled, but sadly it’s been converted into council flats and shops.
We were on the way home when I stopped the car without a comment in the straggling village of Sheepscombe in Peaceful Valley, the unspoilt star of Laurie Lee’s poetic country tale Cider with Rosie. I wanted to look at a particularly spectacular misty view for miles in all directions. The book is an old tear-jerking favourite of mine.
As we got out of the car a madly cheerful sheepdog bounded out of a cottage garden alongside with a stick in its mouth, all ready for a game of chase the stick with whoever was passing.
Didn’t the stupid creature realise? We weren’t speaking.
We tried to ignore it... and each other. The dog kept dropping the stick and yelping. We both bent down together to pick it up at the same moment. We caught each other’s unguarded smiles and suddenly everything was alright again.
There wasn’t a big sign saying “this is romantic”. There didn’t have to be.