Catching up with the Americans, including a vice president, in the Cotswolds

Boston Globe

3 days ago

One of the best-known transplants, DeGeneres, told a crowd in Cheltenham recently that 'everything here is just better,' a comment the British press seized upon gleefully, as if the former talk show host had just endorsed the National Health Service or milky tea.
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She and her wife, Portia de Rossi, had originally planned to divide their time between the United States and Britain, but after Donald Trump won a second presidential term, they decided: 'We're staying here.'
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The couple's first property, a 43-acre estate called Kitesbridge, is on the market for 22.5 million pounds ($30.3 million). They've since moved to a larger estate nearby that can better accommodate their horses, a problem that is rather specific to this postcode.
The Cotswolds, however, hasn't exactly turned out to be a refuge from US politics.
Sheep in The Cotswolds, where Ellen DeGeneres has made a home and Kourtney Kardashian recently called a 'dreamy storybook fairy tale."
Victoria Abbott Riccardi
The Vances — JD, wife Usha, and their three children — are staying at a six-acre property near Charlbury that, according to the Daily Telegraph, has a tennis court, a basement gym, and a Georgian orangery. British media has closely tracked JD Vance's movements in the area. The Daily Mail published a video of his motorcade allegedly driving on the wrong side of the road.
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The visit follows a similarly pastoral outing last week when the Vances went fishing at the country residence of British Foreign Secretary David Lammy. That excursion, too, turned a bit scaly when it became clear the pair apparently broke British law by dropping the hooks without a fishing license, a violation that can carry a fine of up to $3,500. Lammy retroactively paid for the licenses Monday, blaming the misstep on an 'administrative oversight.'
On Wednesday morning, Vance met with Nigel Farage, the leader of the insurgent, anti-immigrant party Reform UK.
Vance's notable Cotswold neighbors include Jeremy Clarkson, the journalist and television presenter who, in a Times of London column, called Vance a vulgar word and said he 'also has no clue about history.' (Vance denied that a remark he made about some 'random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years' was aimed at Britain and France, but many here took offense.)
Other critics held a 'Vance not welcome party' in Charlbury on Tuesday. The organizers, from the Stop Trump Coalition, insisted it wasn't a protest, but they intended to 'dance against Vance!'
Visiting Charlbury from New York for a friend's 40th birthday, Josephine Roth, 29, said the area felt 'very different from US countryside. It's quaint and beautiful.' She nodded toward the street, lined with honey-stone buildings and so quiet you could hear the birds.
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Roth added that she wasn't sure she had much in common with the local celebrities. On hearing that the Vances were nearby, she laughed. 'It makes me want to leave,' she said.
Vice President JD Vance addresses US troops and their families in front of a Lockheed U-2 nicknamed the 'Dragon Lady' during a visit to RAF Fairford on Wednesday. The visit comes as Vance and his family are spending part of their summer vacation in nearby Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds.
Leon Neal/Getty
For the tourism industry and real estate brokers, though, the American market is gold.
Helen Whitfield, of the Cotswold property agency Butler Sherborn, said she has seen a surge in first-time American buyers in the past two months. Motivations include politics back home and relatively lower British university fees, Whitfield said.
The homes they want are 'very traditional Cotswolds, often older than modern America,' she said, and typically in 'untouched, highly protected villages.'
Americans, she added, 'have far more passion for the history than the Brits do.' But even if they want a 300-year-old English cottage, they also want the comforts of a Napa Valley show home, such as underfloor heating and electric, rather than oil-fired, Aga cookstoves. The arrival of exclusive member clubs, such as Soho Farmhouse, has helped to cement the appeal for the elite, she said.
Sally Graff of Cotswolds Tourism said US visitors are its largest overseas market. The region's beauty, history, and idyllic rural life are a major draw. It's the kind of place where you can pop into a 'quaint' pub, pay $50 for a meat pie and a pint, and find yourself bending elbows next to the Beckhams.
While the storybook image of the Cotswolds is readily available to the super-rich, life is less Instagram-ready for others. There are pockets of poverty, seasonal jobs that disappear after summer, and locals priced out by rising housing costs. Tourism can strain daily life.
Some villages are pushing back. Bibury, 'the most beautiful village in England,' according to the artist William Morris, has recently imposed parking restrictions on tour buses. Home to just 600 residents, the village can easily get 10 times that number of visitors on a summer day, upending the quiet that many come seeking in the first place.
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Attendees posed with placards at a "Vance not welcome party", organized by Stop Trump Coalition supporters and local residents in Charlbury, west of London, on Tuesday, as Vance takes his vacation in the English countryside.
DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images
The village noticeboard recently advertised a talk on sustainable church flowers, an art exhibition and, in true Cotswolds fashion, a sprawling philosophical treatise on birdsong.
Tourists, however, seemed unmoved by the big questions of avian existence, preferring instead to photograph Arlington Row, often called the most photographed row of cottages in the country.
Tour guide Robert Gunning, leading a three-village excursion, said 70 percent of his clients were American. 'Somebody said to me today, 'I just want to get away from all the noise in America. It's just Trump, Trump, Trump. I just wanted peace,'' Gunning said.