Cirencester

Very smart and home to the Royal Agricultural College (spiritual home to the aristocracy and anyone else who has an estate to manage), Cirencester is known as the Gateway to the Cotswolds - mainly because, truth be told, its only just on the edge of the classic area. Sadly its High Street has fallen foul of the corporate frontages of building societies, banks and retail chains that seem to be the same all over England. However, delve around and there are a few quirky shops and emporiums - Blackjack Street is a good start where you can buy exotic mustards and strange things in Jesses Bistro, along with a cappucino to keep you going... Interestingly, the limestone strata that has been used for most of the historic buildings in the Cotswolds is the same strata that runs through the Dordogne and Lot regions of France. So much so that when the only working quarry in the Costwolds closed down, builders were forced to import stone from France.
The honey coloured stone is the most obvious characteristic of the buildings, but its main beauty comes from the landscape. Exploited by sheep farmers from the Middle ages, its the wealth from the wool trade that enabled the building & endowment of many of the grand houses, estates and churches in the area. Head North out of Cirencester and you'll soon get a feel for the high open plateaus, interspersed with shallow valleys all enclosed with drystone walls to keep the sheep in. I constantly marvel at the, literally, miles and miles of walling. Having attempted to repair my own metre-long section of garden wall, I can only marvel at the patience and strength of the wall builders of old. Still, I guess shepheards didn't have much else to do once the last wolf was hunted down in the 1700s, so picking up a stone from the field and making a wall with it was their equivalent of surfing the net....