We once lived in Swindon, of course, which makes anywhere in the world that’s unfashionable - with the possible exception of Luton - look like Monaco.

But I do like the Cotswolds, just up the road from where we used to live, and was entertained to see fellow Scot Harry Ritchie defend them in today’s Guardian. He describes first seeing that landscape from the window of a childhood car…

“I had never seen anything like it. Not that Scotland doesn’t have scenery - of course it does, and lots of it. But Scotland doesn’t have much in the way of the lush, bucolic idyll that was passing gloriously by, beyond the car window which my nose was pressed against. Also, in the swathe of Scotland where most Scots live, the view tends to be disrupted - by open-cast mines, power stations, Glasgow …

So the Cotswolds came as a shock.”

This is, I’ll add, a little unfair on Glasgow, but a very accurate description of the Cotswolds’ appeal. It fits, also, for the lovely Forest of Dean, a little to the west.

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « Britain’s most connected civil servant
• » iPhone: but what does it all *mean*?

• BROWSE / IN Travel
• « Video on the net
• » BA’s crisis with crisis management