Latest news with #Cotswolds
The Independent
20 minutes ago
- General
- The Independent
Cotswolds villagers call for ban on tourists' drones after man filmed in bath
Residents of 'the prettiest village in England' are calling for a ban on tourists' drones after one local reported being filmed while taking a bath. 'No drone zone' signs have now been plastered across the windows of homes in Castle Combe in the Cotswolds, as well as in the local church and the public car park. Residents say the aircraft are constantly flying over their gardens and streets – and even by one man's bathroom window. Retired police officer Hilary Baker, 69, told The Sunday Times: 'It's almost like some of the visitors have lost their moral compass, they have lost their boundaries. When you go into your back garden and put your washing out and there is a drone hovering 20 yards above your head, it really quite rankles. 'Another neighbour had been working in his garden and jumped in the bath and there was a drone at his bathroom window, watching him in the bath. You just think, really? 'I should think on a monthly basis I will get verbal abuse [for asking them to stop].' Police were reportedly called on a pilot who would not land his drone last month and verbally abused locals when they asked him to respect their privacy. It is claimed he filmed children playing in a back garden and flew up and down the high street hovering at first floor window level. The Independent has contacted Wiltshire Police about the incident. Before the drones, tourists were overstepping boundaries in Castle Combe for years, according to residents, with signs seen asking visitors to not pick flowers or walk down homes' side alleys. But Ms Baker, who has lived in the Wiltshire village for more than three decades, said there has been a recent surge in tourists flying drowns for their social media channels, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. While the picturesque village is only home to a few hundred people, thousands of visitors descend on the area every week, having seen videos on various social media platforms. Often referred to as one of the 'prettiest villages in England', its historic centre is a particular draw as well as its chocolate box cottages. Sisters Lydia Chia, 27, and Deborah Chia, 24, who were posing for photos on a trip from Singapore, told The Times: 'I saw it on my friend's Instagram and a little bit on TikTok. It's really pretty. I pick where to visit based on pictures and aesthetics, and whether or not it's Instagrammable.' Chairman of the parish council Fred Winup found that just over half of tourists chose to visit Castle Combe after seeing it online, in a visitor survey he conducted last year. The retired bank director told of a time a drone followed him along the high street 'just five feet above my head', adding: 'It was a Californian [piloting it], he was a nice guy who didn't know the rules and said he was sorry.' Wiltshire council has now put a sign up in the public car park, following calls from the parish council. The warning to drone pilots reads: 'If you use these devices where people can expect privacy, such as inside their home or garden, you are likely to be contravening CAA [Civil Aviation Authority] guidelines'. The rules that are in place around drones, while complicated, typically require pilots to have the aircraft in their line of sight, to avoid getting close to crowds or building, and to respect people's privacy. With some devices having reportedly crashed into the church roof or resident's trees, Mr Winup said: 'People do lose control of drones and they could take an eye out.'
The Independent
3 hours ago
- General
- The Independent
The ‘prettiest village in England' launches war on drones
Residents of Castle Combe in the Cotswolds, known as 'the prettiest village in England,' are calling for a ban on tourist drones after incidents of privacy invasion, including one report of a resident being filmed while taking a bath. 'No drone zone' signs have been posted across the village, including on homes, the local church, and the public car park, due to constant drone flights over gardens and streets. A retired police officer, Hilary Baker, reported that some visitors have lost their moral compass, recounting incidents of drones hovering over gardens and near bathroom windows, leading to verbal abuse when residents ask pilots to stop. Police were called last month on a drone pilot who verbally abused locals and allegedly filmed children playing in a back garden; Wiltshire Council has since put up signs warning drone pilots about violating privacy guidelines. A survey by the parish council chairman, Fred Winup, revealed that over half of tourists visit Castle Combe after seeing it online, with many influenced by social media posts on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, leading to increased drone usage and privacy concerns.
Times
3 hours ago
- General
- Times
What I learnt about Englishness in this bafflingly undervalued region
On the day I drive home from my bike ride, the village of Bibury in the Cotswolds shelves plans for a parking area for 130 cars and 10 coaches. As many as 20,000 visitors arrive in the village each weekend. 'We want to manage the overtourism we've already got,' a resident tells BBC Radio Gloucestershire. People keep coming, the reporter says, because social media promotes Bibury as quintessential pastoral England. I think: they're in the wrong county, though. For I've just come from quintessential pastoral England, having spent two days on lanes unknown to coach tours, among shapely hills, small farms and slumbering villages. This is the finest full-spectrum evocation of the English countryside I've experienced, in a region where the words of William Blake seem to drift through hedgerows. And it lies not in the Cotswolds but further west, in Herefordshire, a county that in 2023 received 5.87 million visitors to the Cotswolds' 35 million. I hadn't really come for a deep dive into Englishness. I'd arrived to go cycling. In early May White Heron, a collection of luxury farm stays on the Hilditch family's estate 20 miles northwest of Hereford, launched guided bike tours. 'There's lots of cycling around Ludlow and Hereford but no one comes here,' explains Gio Hilditch, husband of the farm's owner, Jo, once I arrive. 'Here' is the Welsh Marches, a fold in the map between England and Wales that Gio has been exploring with his cycling buddies for 30 years. If that suggests a trip pistoning along back lanes, fear not. First, this one uses ebikes (Ridgeback X2 hybrids, cycle geeks). Second, it's billed as a meander — over two days you cover just 30 miles. The aim is rather to reveal a bafflingly undervalued region. Before we begin, Jo wants to show off her estate. So would you if you were a fourth-generation farmer of 700 acres, scion of a great-grandfather who led an association of Hereford cattle, the hardy bovine that put the 'cow' into the cowboys of the American west. On a still evening the three of us pedal around the estate, and I learn about sustainable chicken rearing (who knew chicken poo alone could fuel three 600kW boilers?) and the minutiae of growing blackcurrants ('they all go to Ribena'). In avenues of apple blossom I'm reminded of weddings. Wood pigeons coo. Pheasants cough in hedgerows. As the sun sizzles on the horizon, nature holds its breath in a moment of quiet magic. Led by Jo and Gio, our five-strong peloton gathers the next morning. Two are regular cyclists, the rest of us are part-time pedallers. From the off it's terrific. Either side of a stripe of grass, we cycle two abreast on lanes frothy with cow parsley and bluebells. The town of Kington appears. Handsome streets, a butcher in a blue apron laying sausages in the window, a whiff of patchouli incense: it's the first intimation of the border country's split personality, equal parts yeoman farmers and alternative downshifters. What unites them is a love of this green and pleasant land. Outside Kington we ride across the roof of the Marches. The Offa's Dyke Path along Hergest Ridge provides euphoric widescreen views. Hills recede into a blue-grey haze below. A skylark warbles unseen. When we pause I realise there's no growl of internal combustion engine, no whine of passing jet. It feels a privilege to be here. • 15 of the most beautiful places in England Denys Corbett Wilson would have recognised the view, if not the silence. In 1912 he laid a wager with Damer Leslie Allen over which of them would be the first person to fly from England to Ireland. Wilson soared over Hergest Ridge before making an emergency landing at the hamlet of Colva, in what is now Powys, due to low-grade castor oil in his engine. Having waited there for his mechanic, he took off again and landed in Wexford five days later. Allen, meanwhile, was seen crossing at Holyhead — and then never seen again. Forty years earlier the country diarist Francis Kilvert visited Colva on a stroll. Along the drover's road he carried a dozen biscuits, two apples, a flask of wine and opera glasses, and reached a ''poor humble dear little whitewashed church sequestered among its ancient yews'. We ride the same road to find the historian Joe Kerr (he's heard all the gags) outside St David's: still dear, still with its yews. 'It's 13th century but by tradition was founded by the great saint himself. The church at Glascwm was and that's six miles away,' Kerr says. St David's probably replaced an earlier Celtic church, he adds. 'This feels like a place used for centuries.' • 11 of the best cycling routes in the UK For we have crossed into Wales and the land crackles with Celtic magic. In St Peter's Church at Bryngwyn, three miles south, there are kneelers embroidered with otters and plough horses, and a prehistoric standing stone roughly carved with crosses. Birds sing a hosannah outside. We travel onwards via lanes that tie themselves into knots and then we hop over the River Arrow on bridges seemingly out of Postman Pat. One slips us back into England on a track to a farmyard where a cockerel flees into a hay barn. A door in a red-brick wall opens into paradise: a hammock swings in a small orchard, swallows swoop and chitter, the Wye Valley unrolls a lush carpet to bosky slopes. Corisande Albert and her husband, Angus Grahame, appear with glasses of chilled pear cider. With their Cabalva perry estate, the farming-pottery couple hope to rehabilitate a once-popular drink. Perry farmers perfected the champagne method when fizz was just a twinkle in Dom Pérignon's eye, according to Grahame. 'Every farm once had a little orchard for perry,' he says. 'We're trying to make it approachable again.' I can't see why it isn't already. Dangerously quaffable, half the strength of wine, it's an ideal summer aperitif, which only goes to show how insouciant we can be about our heritage. Maybe it's the booze and the delicious lunch eaten outside off Albert's plates. Perhaps it's just the view. Either way, this feels as close to the good life as it gets in Britain. • 13 of the most luxurious places to stay in Herefordshire Gio spoils it rather with talk of 'Kill Pitch'. Its steep hill arrives beyond Hay-on-Wye (bunting, books and a queue outside Shepherds Ice Cream parlour). As the incline steepens I flick to the ebike's highest power and cruise uphill. Literally no sweat. I sit on the terrace of a spacious safari tent at Drovers Rest drinking a rehydration beer I don't truly deserve. The next day is May Day. In the half-light of dawn some of us pedal to Arthur's Stone, a neolithic tomb on the valley summit. A ragtag band have beaten us to it. Morris dancers jingle and clack, and a man in a costume of green ribbons like leaves pipes the sun's rise. Scratch the topsoil of Merrie England hereabouts and a seam of pagan tradition lies beneath. Who's to say they're wrong? When we return later that morning the Golden Valley glows in morning light and the Skirrid, aka the Holy Mountain, is an enigmatic pyramid above hills. It's scenery to bring out the mystic in anyone. The rest of that day is one of images. Hillsides festive with white apple blossom. Silver-green willows trailing in the Wye during a dip at Bredwardine. Among the wonky black and white houses of Weobley village square are two old boys in braces. They lean on a muddy SUV to discuss a friend's apple-growing in accents you could chew on: 'It's like a ewe and a lamb, see? The one always knows the other.' We process into Pembridge, then slip behind the 17th-century New Inn and into a handsome cobbled square. A picnic bench has been laid with a white tablecloth, fine tableware, a tureen of soup and a platter of venison pâté and sourdough bread. Lunch has arrived before us. To be honest, I'm reluctant to tell you about any of this. So many of the qualities we seek from foreign travel are outside the back door in Herefordshire — not just obvious things, like fresh air and views, but proud regional cuisines and a sense of lives well lived in harmony with timeless landscapes. Too many of us are too quick to ignore at home what we would eulogise about abroad. Who'd have guessed all it took to find them was a bike? Millions of visitors a year come to find something similar in the Cotswolds. Fortunately Herefordshire is rubbish at providing coach Stewart was a guest of White Heron, which has three nights' half-board from £750pp, including ebike hire and luggage transfer ( Next public trip June 10-13 and September 23-26; private trips can be arranged
The Independent
17 hours ago
- Lifestyle
- The Independent
Residents in scenic Costwolds village fight back against tourists
Residents of Castle Combe in the Cotswolds, known as 'the prettiest village in England,' are calling for a ban on tourist drones after a local resident reported being filmed while taking a bath. 'No drone zone' signs have been placed on homes, the local church, and the public car park due to constant drone flights over gardens and streets in the Wiltshire village. A retired police officer reported instances of drones hovering over gardens and near bathroom windows, leading to feelings of intrusion and verbal abuse when confronting pilots. Police were called last month on a drone pilot who verbally abused locals and allegedly filmed children playing in a back garden. A Wiltshire Council sign in the public car park warns drone pilots that using devices in areas where people expect privacy may violate Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) guidelines.
The Independent
a day ago
- Lifestyle
- The Independent
Villagers fed up of tourists' drones call for ban after man filmed in bath
Fed up residents of 'the prettiest village in England' are calling for a ban on tourists' drones after one local reported being filmed while taking a bath. 'No drone zone' signs have now been plastered across the windows of homes in Castle Combe in the Cotswolds, as well as in the local church and the public car park. Residents say the aircraft are constantly flying over their gardens and streets – and even by one man's bathroom window. Retired police officer Hilary Baker, 69, told The Sunday Times: 'It's almost like some of the visitors have lost their moral compass, they have lost their boundaries. When you go into your back garden and put your washing out and there is a drone hovering 20 yards above your head, it really quite rankles. 'Another neighbour had been working in his garden and jumped in the bath and there was a drone at his bathroom window, watching him in the bath. You just think, really? 'I should think on a monthly basis I will get verbal abuse [for asking them to stop].' Police were reportedly called on a pilot who would not land his drone last month and verbally abused locals when they asked him to respect their privacy. It is claimed he filmed children playing in a back garden and flew up and down the high street hovering at first floor window level. The Independent has contacted Wiltshire Police about the incident. Before the drones, tourists were overstepping boundaries in Castle Combe for years, according to residents, with signs seen asking visitors to not pick flowers or walk down homes' side alleys. But Ms Baker, who has lived in the Wiltshire village for more than three decades, said there has been a recent surge in tourists flying drowns for their social media channels, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. While the picturesque village is only home to a few hundred people, thousands of visitors descend on the area every week, having seen videos on various social media platforms. Often referred to as one of the 'prettiest villages in England', its historic centre is a particular draw as well as its chocolate box cottages. Sisters Lydia Chia, 27, and Deborah Chia, 24, who were posing for photos on a trip from Singapore, told The Times: 'I saw it on my friend's Instagram and a little bit on TikTok. It's really pretty. I pick where to visit based on pictures and aesthetics, and whether or not it's Instagrammable.' Chairman of the parish council Fred Winup found that just over half of tourists chose to visit Castle Combe after seeing it online, in a visitor survey he conducted last year. The retired bank director told of a time a drone followed him along the high street 'just five feet above my head', adding: 'It was a Californian [piloting it], he was a nice guy who didn't know the rules and said he was sorry.' Wiltshire council has now put a sign up in the public car park, following calls from the parish council. The warning to drone pilots reads: 'If you use these devices where people can expect privacy, such as inside their home or garden, you are likely to be contravening CAA [Civil Aviation Authority] guidelines'. The rules that are in place around drones, while complicated, typically require pilots to have the aircraft in their line of sight, to avoid getting close to crowds or building, and to respect people's privacy. With some devices having reportedly crashed into the church roof or resident's trees, Mr Winup said: 'People do lose control of drones and they could take an eye out.'
