Crooked half-timbered houses, buckled roof lines and narrow alleyways lined with medieval buildings give Tudor-heavy Tewkesbury a higgledy-piggledy charm. There’s also a lovely riverside area with ancient passageways leading up to Church St, where you’ll find the town’s most glorious building, the magnificent medieval abbey church.
Riddled with historic buildings and still exuding the gracious air of an 18th-century spa resort, Cheltenham is a cosmopolitan hub at the centre of the rustic Cotswolds. The town grew dramatically after its spa waters were discovered in 1716 and in its heyday rivalled Bath as the place for the sick, hypochondriac and merely moneyed to go.
The steep hills, winding tree-lined roads, lakes and unspoilt vistas of the Forest of Dean make for excellent touring by car, foot or bike. The area, England’s first National Forest Park, was formerly a royal hunting ground and a centre of iron and coal mining and its mysterious depths were supposedly the inspiration for JRR Tolkien’s setting for The Lord of the Rings. The forest covers a 42-sq-mile swathe between Gloucester, Ross-on-Wye and Chepstow and is dotted with trails for walkers and cyclists.
Despite its glorious Norman cathedral and glimmer of medieval character, workaday Gloucester (glos-ter) is forever destined to live in the shadow of its more glamorous neighbour. Yet unlike glitzy Cheltenham, it’s a refreshingly unpretentious place and between the modern architectural blunders and steak-and-kidney-pie cafés, the city is beginning to transform its fortunes, redeveloping its historic docks into trendy apartments and heaving itself out of financial decline.