Self Catering Holiday Cottages in Tewkesbury

Holidays in Tewkesbury

One of the easiest ways for new visitors to orientate themselves is to take a self-guided walking tour on the Heritage and Alleyways Trail which is signposted from the Tourist Information Centre on Church Street. The trail wends its way along narrow alleys built hundreds of years ago and lined with shops selling antiques, vintage books, curios and cakes. Foodies should make a beeline for the twice-weekly market held every Wednesday and Saturday, and a popular Farmers’ Market that runs on the second Saturday of the month. This map will help you familiarise yourself with the town.

Keen historians will enjoy the opportunity to explore beautiful Tewkesbury Abbey and to find out more about the town’s past at the John Moore Museum. The Old Baptist Chapel and Court has been skillfully restored to its Tudor glory days to make it easy to see how imposing a setting it must have been when it first opened. The Tewkesbury Museum is in a fancy black-and-white 17th Century building and run by enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff, with well-curated exhibits and activities to keep younger visitors entertained. Tewkesbury also embraces its past with a spectacular annual medieval festival of reenactment which typically takes place over two-days in mid-July.

Just outside of the town centre is the site of the Battle of Tewkesbury, notable for the death of Edward, the Lancastrian Prince of Wales, which took place on 4 May 1471. The southern part of the battlefield remains largely undeveloped and there is a self-guided walking trail that takes in some of the key sites such as The Bloody Meadow next to Coinbrook, where many fleeing Lancastrians were slaughtered as they attempted to cross the River Severn. Two wooden horses made from green oak, stand on either side of the A38 Tewkesbury border to represent the warring houses of York and Lancaster.

Leaving the town is almost as much of a pleasure as arriving if you take one of the many way-marked footpaths that lead along the river and through the lush Gloucestershire countryside. Favourite routes include the Severn Way footpath, through the Beckford Nature Reserve, up Bredon Hill and along the Coombe Hill Canal. A summer walk to the Severn Ham provides beautiful views across the meadow to the Abbey and some of the town’s oldest buildings. Cyclists have direct access to the National Cycling Route 45 which passes through the town, and there are a variety of mountain bike trails all within half an hour’s drive at Bredon Hill, Cleeve Hill, the Malvern Hills and the Forest of Dean.

Tewkesbury is the perfect Town and Country holiday destination as the upmarket boutiques, restaurants and famous racecourse of Cheltenham are only twenty minutes away. The cathedral cities of Gloucester and Hereford are within easy reach, as is Worcester. Better still, the gorgeous Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is close by, with pretty towns and villages like Upper Slaughter and Bourton-on-the-Water being just twenty miles east of Tewkesbury.

Although Tewkesbury is a thoroughly contemporary market town, the past never feels very far away. It is a wonderful amalgamation of modern and medieval with something to delight everyone.