The grim reality of living in a Cotswold village overrun by tourists

Telegraph

29-03-2025

Teenagers filming TikTok videos on your doorstep, random tourists walking past your back garden while you're sunbathing French style (if you catch my drift), and finding a noisy American peering through your front window.
It's all par for the course when you live in a Cotswold hotspot, says Broadway resident Claire Gleave.
'We have gates in front of our house and we have, on occasion, found young girls filming TikTok videos at the end of our driveway,' says Gleave. 'Once we had an entire family from Japan walking down to take pictures of the house. That was pretty intrusive and our kids really didn't like it.'
Overtourism in the Cotswolds has been under the spotlight this week after the chocolate-box village of Bibury announced restrictions on coaches – a move that will certainly have the backing of fed-up residents.
Gleave, who also runs a holiday let in equally winsome Broadway, grew up in another Cotswold honeypot, Bourton-on-the-Water.
'I remember the police stopping people coming in on occasion because it was so overcrowded. We had to prove we lived there and point to our house,' she says.
Another Broadway resident, Claire Alexander, who used to run The Ebrington Arms near Chipping Campden and now owns The Killingworth Castle, a pub with rooms near Blenheim Palace, says she has really come to dread the Cheltenham Festival week, held every March.
'It's the horror of the tweed fashion show that descends in the village during Cheltenham. You can't move for fur gilets and red faces pacing up and down the High Street. It's quite the combination,' she says.
At her pub, however, they have the best of both worlds, Alexander says.
'We have a fab mix of locals and tourists and that creates the best atmosphere. Being so close to the Soho Farmhouse, we often get celebrities popping in for a pint… because they want a proper pub.'
Many of Alexander's guests tell them they will be visiting Bibury while they are there too. 'We always tell them to go there early in the morning or after 4pm when the coaches have long gone,' she says.
The Cotswolds region, an area of outstanding national beauty (AONB), which covers five counties, including Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire, stretches over almost 800 miles and attracts more than 35 million visitors a year.
It is home to a plethora of A-listers including Kate Moss, Calvin Harris, David and Victoria Beckham, Liv Tyler, Ellen de Generes and Simon Cowell, and has been dubbed 'The Hamptons' of the UK.
Over in Chipping Norton, home to Amazon Prime star Jeremy Clarkson and Alex James of Nineties Britpop band Blur, locals say they are deluged every weekend.
Jenny Holliday, who moved to 'Chippy' from London in 2020, says they deliberately chose a town that didn't have a coach park (unlike Bibury and Bourton-on-the-Water) and was a bit less touristy.
'But there are tell-tale signs that the town is becoming more of a tourist hotspot now. The house opposite ours is now an Airbnb and various cars, usually big fancy SUVs, are parked outside,' Holliday says.
Then there are the queues of pilgrims going to visit Clarkson's farm shop, Diddly Squat.
'We call them the 'Diddly cars' – mostly classic and sports cars – and they usually flood the town on a weekend. And you know it's almost the Easter holidays because of the increase in ones with massive roof boxes,' says Holliday.
Amanda Stecker is the founder of Unique Cotswold Cottages, which has a number of properties in the so-called 'Golden Triangle' of Burford, Chipping Norton and Stow-on-the-Wold.
She says visitors are both a blessing and a curse.
'We have seen tourists block driveways, park in our parking spaces (signposted for our guests) and go right up to the windows of our cottages to take a photo of the interior,' she says.
'In Bourton-on-the-Water, there has been lots of talk from locals about coaches [which] have been spotted dangerously parked on double yellow lines to let their passengers out.'
Stecker says they are mindful of the impact their guests can have.
'It's a fine balance of tourists bringing in much-needed income to the local pubs, restaurants and shops but also being respectful – especially in the summer months when it gets very busy,' she notes.
Roanna Strombery-Smith, who lives in Lechlade, just up the road from both Bibury and Bampton, where Downton Abbey was filmed, says she regularly sees her local area being overrun.
'I think some of the visitors think that these are just model villages rather than places where people actually live,' adds Strombery-Smith, CEO of The RSS Brand, a Cotswold concierge service.
Danni McCabe, who lives in Chipping Camden and runs Cotswold Bridal Couture, says that sometimes tourists come in to park on the High Street to walk the 102-mile Cotswold Way and leave their cars there for a week.
'We don't get the big coaches, thankfully, but we do attract a lot of visitors to the town, including walkers, holidaymakers staying in Airbnbs and those who are here for weddings.'
Some Cotswold hotspots, however, are a bit less busy than others. One couple, who didn't want to be named but have a cottage in Upper Slaughter, a village which is so pretty it could be from a Lewis Carroll book, says that most tourists are quite respectful.
'Sometimes you can't even spot who the tourists are, although they do tend to dawdle a bit more – and locals are usually the ones with dogs,' they said.
'We've never actually had anyone park in one of our parking spots. I think because we're a bit off the beaten track here, it's that bit quieter.'
A friend, however, who used to have a cottage just off the famous Arlington Row in Bibury, is still traumatised by an involuntary run-in with a tourist who mistook the track which ran adjacent to her house as a public bridlepath. He strolled down to find her sunbathing topless in her back garden. She didn't know who was more shocked.