Next Stop: The Cotswolds

THIS IS WHERE I GOT stuck in the bathtub. My wife and I share plenty of wonderful memories of our three days in England’s Cotswolds region, but there was something almost surreal about the bathtub incident that causes it to hijack at least my own memory.

We took the three-and-a-half hour drive from Seaford to Moreton-in-Marsh in an extremely comfortable Peugeot SUV, chatting with Haroon, our driver, all along the way. That may seem like too much, but it was a fascinating conversation as we learned about his years in his native Pakistan – which at one point involved a shootout where he got in the way and lingered near death for a while – and his now-happier life living in Birmingham with a wife and kids. You can understand that the ride never grew boring.

The uniformity of appearance from building to antique-looking building in the town is due to Cotswold stone, a type of Midlands-mined limestone that dates from the Jurassic Period. It’s prized for its oolite appearance, taken from the Proto-Hellenic word for egg, “ōyyón,” referring to the egglike bumps on the stone’s surface. And if the stone looks familiar, it’s because it also gives its distinctive appearance to Blenheim Palace and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Our immediate destination, the Manor House Hotel, on M-i-M’s High Street, showed the charming combination of Cotswold stone on the outside and imaginative design within. The airy ground floor offered areas in which to relax, to work, to quaff; our third-floor (or, in England, second-floor) room waited at the end of a slanted-ceiling corridor along which I carefully ducked. And it couldn’t have been more charming and nicely appointed. And just look at that capacious bathtub!

Ah, but we needed to explore. Susan explored the village itself, laid out along some four or five walkable blocks. She offered to push me in my underused transport chair, but I chose instead to explore the adjoining bar for a pint of Cotswold Best and a welcome dish of olives. Welcome mostly because it was too early in the day for the main menu to kick in, so only a few cold appetizers were offered.

We dined that evening at the Swan Inn, in another vintage structure of Cotswold Stone, this one styling itself as a family-friendly sports pub. Susan enjoyed a vegetarian lasagne, which seemed to me to defeat the purpose of the dish, while I had a good-sized portion of pork chops and mashed. We’d been assigned to watch a BBC documentary titled “A Year on Helvellyn,” to prepare us for our upcoming jaunt to the Manchester area. I’m no fan of that kind of program, which I find over-edited, over-narrated, and generally overwrought, so I excused myself to take advantage of that bathtub.

And it was enjoyable, soaking my tired legs in water that came out hotter than the taps in my house ever emit. The challenge I faced, as I set the tub to emptying, was in getting my outsized body upright. To do so I would need to kneel (and on chronically sore knees, I might add). In order to kneel, I’d need to rotate. In order to rotate, I’d need some form of levering-aid that the high sides of the tub didn’t offer. I tried pushing up from those side-rims, but, since I was pushing from each side of my fat waist, that was an impossible dead lift.

Each new effort proved exhausting. I sprawled in the tub between said efforts, suddenly sympathetic to Gregor Samsa’s plight. If I could only turn onto my side . . .

Susan couldn’t more turn me. I was a 300-pound boulder, only slippery. I imagined the call to the desk for help, a maintenance crew arriving to suffer this assault on the eyes. The call for more help. Local firefighters hurrying to our room. The hands, the arms plunging into the tub around and beneath me. The ridicule that would circulate ever after.

I have performed enough home-renovation tasks to know that I could expect no reliable leverage from bathtub fixtures. I’ve installed them. There’s not much keeping them in place. Same for any towel racks and shelving. Susan considered my plight, and, to her credit, did so without laughing. But her entry into the bathroom presented a possibility of liberation. The door opened inward. Doors are sturdy, and the heavy doorknobs were within reach. I grasped them both, one in each hand, and was able to winch myself to my knees and from there climb free. Thus ended my last-ever soak in a bathtub.

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Breakfast at the hotel is served in a sunny atrium, fueling us for the busy market day ahead. What has long made this village a popular destination is the convenient rail line, directly linked to London, which has helped maintain Moreton-in-Marsh’s identity as a market town. Tuesdays are traditional market days here, with some 200 vendor stalls lining Fosse Street. And this is a tradition that goes back to the 13th century, long predating the arrival of the railway in 1853.

Those stalls lined a pair of parallel street-stretches, with food and gadgets and clothing and more on display. Susan decided she needed a dress, so we dipped into a maze of women’s clothing. The proprietor of that stall literally sized her up, recommending this dress and that, turning her reactions into more recommendations. He knew when to interact; he knew when to leave her alone. She walked away delighted with both a dress and an attractive sweater.

Our main event was a visit to Hidcote Manor, a National Trust property featuring a ten-acre garden designed by Major Lawrence Johnston, a transplanted American who fought in the Boer War before settling into his mother’s Gloucestershire mansion. I was a bit confused at first, thinking we’d be visiting the property once owned by the actor John Wood, who appeared with Peter Sellers in “Two-Way Stretch” and Spike Milligan in “Postman’s Knock” and “Invasion Quartet.” His was Hidcote House, however; the Manor is its own estate.

We booked a local taxi service to get there, thus meeting a delightful driver named Kim, herself a transplant from South Africa, but now as knowledgeable as a native about local lore and places. A boon for me was getting my very own taxi, of sorts: one of the mobility scooters they save for dodderers like me. This allowed me to cover much of the grounds, following a map that’s provided, and to avoid listening to Susan exult over this or that obscure piece of flora.

Chauffeur Kim went off on an airport run while we toured the estate, but was back in time to fetch us back to our hotel. This time she offered a more leisurely route, taking us through Chipping Campden and Blockley and Bourton-on-the-Hill, each a picturesque gem.

The nearby Inn on the Marsh has been a pub since 1870, and is now connected with Marston’s, a mega-brewery that owns over a thousand pubs across England and Wales. There was nothing of the chain-restaurant feel to the place: it was homey, with a music theme to its decor. That Susan and I both ordered fish and chips was a tribute to the comfort of the place. We were sitting among locals, yet felt not at all the exceptions. And the food and beer were delicious.

Susan was not to be denied her walks, and the next day set out for the Batsford Arboretum and Cotswold Falconry as I explored the many venues in and around our hotel where one could sit and read. We chose yet another of the village hostelries for the evening meal, ankling over to the Bell Inn, which has a story of its own. Near Moreton-in-Marsh is the conjunction of what once were the counties of Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Oxfordshire, but since have been re-drawn into three. It’s marked by the Four Shire Stone, and is said to be the inspiration for the Three-Farthing Stone in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien was a regular visitor to Moreton-in-Marsh, and stopped for drinks at The Bell Inn, which became The Prancing Pony in “Lord of the Rings.”

Nevertheless, we pursued a very un-Middle-Earth diet and ordered a pizza, fully loaded. (The pizza, that is, not us.) It featured speck ham, Napoli salami, fennel salami, oregano infused tomato sauce, and Fior di Latte mozzarella, and to compound our sinfulness, we ordered garlic bread as well, which turned out to be another form of pizza! Fully loaded, we slept the dreamless sleep of one who’s burping oregano all night, and prepared for our next-day’s journey to Manchester.