What water?

It's Bourton-on-the-water (Botw), known as the "Little Venice" of Cotswold. I only heard about this place from a friend whose friends went there for a day trip. I thought why not since it's just 1 1/2 hours train ride. And so we managed to gather a group of people, booked the tickets (GBP17.50) yesterday and hopped on the train early this morning at 7.56am. While the trip itself is relatively short, the journey to the village is not as easy. From the Cheltenham Spa train station, we had to get to Royal Wells to catch a Pulham's bus to Botw, which comes every 1 1/2 hours (GBP1.80). The walk to Royal Wells takes 24 minutes, assuming we can navigate our way around. So, we opted for the wiser choice - a cab (since we missed the infrequent bus to city centre due to the 15-minute delayed train to Bristol) shared among 5 persons.

35 minutes later, we arrived in Botw. The journey to this charming village was a joy itself, passing through vast green and brown fields, dotted by white sheeps against the backdrop of a clear blue sky, decorated with fluffy clouds. But the village turned out to be even more enchanting than the ride. The first sight to greet us was the yellow Cotswold stone houses along the banks of river Windrush. I could not help but to keep marvelling at the possibility of the existence of such a heavenly land. Along the river are a total of 5 low bridges, the perfect spot for photography.

As we tried to navigate our way towards the tourist information centre (less than 10 minutes away from the bus stop), our pace was occasionally interrupted by the need to capture the beautiful scenery with our cameras. Sini, sana, sini, sana - that's how our photography steps looked like. Finally, one of us came to her senses and managed to shepherd everyone to the right path. But that was not before we stopped to contemplate entering a flea market. As the village is actually really, really tiny, it was not difficult for us to find the attractions.

Our first stop was the model village, featuring an excellent miniature of Botw in 1937. We had a great time pretending to be Gulliver. Too bad there wasn't any little people to accentuate our gigantism. Nevertheless, those little houses (at 1/9th scale) still managed to do wonders to my height. Some of the prominent buildings I could remember is the Edinburgh Woollen shop (which I think should be decorated with sales sign), post office and Llyod bank. There was also the church, from where we could hear the choir.

Soon it was lunch time. We stopped at Knightsbridge inn for a traditional meal. I ordered a Lanchashire hot pot (made of muttons and potatoes) served with vegetables and new potatoes (I never develop a taste for these). At the end of the meal, I discovered that the shop sells treacle pudding, a favourite English food in Enid Blyton's books. I wished I had room for dessert. Unfortunately, the hot pot was too heavy. I am not sure when and where I will be able to find a shop serving this old dessert.

With renewed strength, it was time for shopping. With good self-control, I constrained myself to a magnet and postcard. With much enthusiam, my friends ended up with some good and satisfying bargains.

We continued to stroll along the river as we headed towards the Dragonfly Maze (GBP2.50). There was a point when we got so distracted that we forgot where we were heading to. And we are talking about a village with less than 10 main attractions, all within walking distance (i.e. less than 20 minutes away).

The maze is not a normal maze. We had to solve a puzzle. According to the sign, the brainy ones will solve the puzzle within 20 minutes. So we had a benchmark. At the entrance, we were given a piece of paper with instructions and space to write down the answers. There were a total of 14 clues which will form into a 14-word sentence. Each clues were placed on flagstones, some pictorial, some words. In the beginning, we were pretty excited, stopping for photography once in awhile. However, after some time, we were turning round and round without any sign of the last two clues. I began to feel like we had been trapped there for more than an hour but of course, this was just an exaggeration. Finally we came to a little round house. We entered to find a frog in a mirrored cylinder in the middle of the house. Our answer was "Place your clock on the friar's keys and stare on the caterpillar and weight". Didn't make much sense to me. After staring at the frog for a good few minutes, we wanted to give up before someone finally spotted a white, miserable-looking dragonfly. We decided that was the answer and left.

At the exit (which was just a short distance away), we met the lady at the counter who helped us to correct the clue. So we returned to the house and tried again. Yet, we did not find anything additional. And so, we left again. The lady asked,"Did you press on the ******?" Oops. Returned to try again. This time, we found the real dragonfly. It was a pretty neat trick. Unfortunately, we were not brainy enough (:P) Paiser...took us an hour to complete this whole task.

We spent the last few minutes on more photographs of the wonderful river. How I love the name windrush. I could sit by the river bank a whole day, enjoying the breeze (if it happens to be a fine day like today) and listening to the water gushing down the river. Every nook and every corner of this village was a pleasure to the lens.

If I were an investment banker in London, I would buy a little cottage in this little village and come by every once in awhile to destress. I would watch the leaves changing colours throughout the different seasons. I would be able to see snow covering the banks, flowers blooming all over the place, ducklings playing on the water and leaves falling onto the ground.