Clover Cottage at Wyck Rissington

I’m going to pause in our trip through The Cotswolds to tell you about our accommodation for the next seven nights – Clover Cottage at Wyck Rissington.

Located about 40 miles north of where we spent the last week in Tetbury, the name Wyck Rissington translates from the Saxon as “a building of special significance on a hill covered with brushwood.” Hmmm, I’ll take Wikipedia’s word for that. There are, incidentally, four other Rissingtons in the area – Great, Little and Upper which, in case you needed to know, is so called because it’s one of the highest villages in The Cotswolds.

Anyways, Wyck Rissington is a quintessential Cotswolds village – it has a church, a village green that is only cut twice a year so becomes (apparently) quite meadow-like during the summer, a duck pond and a Victorian drinking fountain. What I adored is the little shelter on the green where newspapers are left for residents to collect and all the parish council news is posted.

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While Wyck Rissington doesn’t have a pub or any other amenities, located just a mile or so away from Bourton on the Water and Lower Slaughter in one direction and a couple of miles away from Stow on the Wold in the other, we don’t miss them. The village is, however, perfectly quiet and perfectly English and, well, just perfect. 

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As is Clover Cottage. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here, Clover Cottage could just be the nicest and best-equipped cottage we’ve ever rented. Louise, our host, is delightful and lives next door if we need anything – although given that she has thought of everything, even leaving a loaf of freshly baked bread for us, we had no need to bother her. 

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While the cottage is small, there are only three of us and it was plenty big enough for that. It’s comfortable, cozy, warm, and there’s a great stock of books in bookcases scattered in pretty much every room. I latched onto a copy of John Baxter’s The Most Beautiful Walk In The World (spoiler alert – he’s talking about Paris), but also found myself referring a lot to the book about garden birds that sat in the kitchen near the bird feeders, and even dipping in and out of some of the poetry.

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From here we’ll be exploring the villages north of Cirencester and we’ll even take a day trip across to Oxford…so stay with me for those.

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If you want more information about this beautiful cottage, you can find it here.