A day in the Cotswolds with good friends and a few Ferraris

The Cotswolds are an easy drive west of London, so most groups fly into Heathrow and head out the same day. The cars can be arranged through a Ferrari dealer or a specialist hire company, who will usually deliver them to your hotel or a meeting point near Oxford. Late spring and early fall are lovely times to go. The countryside is green, the lanes are calm and the evenings are long enough to enjoy the last of the light.

Driving on the left takes a few miles to settle into, and the lanes are narrow, with dry stone walls on either side. This is a part of the world best enjoyed at an easy pace, which suits a day like this perfectly. The route below is about 60 miles from start to finish, leaving plenty of time to stop along the way.

Start at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, just north of Oxford. It was the birthplace of Winston Churchill and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a walk through the grounds before setting off is a lovely way to begin the day.

From Woodstock, the road heads north through open farmland to Great Tew, about 10 miles away. It’s one of the prettiest villages in Oxfordshire, with thatched cottages of honey-colored ironstone set around a small green. Much of the village was carefully restored in the late 1970s, and it looks very much as it would have done centuries ago.

At the heart of the village is the Falkland Arms, an historic inn dating from the late 17th century, or possibly earlier. It takes its name from Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, whose family owned the Great Tew estate. Inside there are flagstone floors, an inglenook fireplace and old jugs and tankards hanging from the beams.

It’s the kind of place where a long lunch comes naturally. The menu is traditional English pub food, cooked well with signature English pies and roasts, and they serve Wadworth real ales for whoever isn’t driving the afternoon stretch. On a warm day, the garden is the place to sit, and in cooler weather it’s a table by the fire. A row of Ferraris parked outside an inn that has been welcoming travelers for more than 300 years makes a lovely photograph, too.

After lunch, it’s a short drive west to the Rollright Stones, a circle of standing stones more than 4,000 years old, on a ridge just outside Chipping Norton. From there the road runs on to Stow-on-the-Wold, an old market town set high on the hill, and down to the Slaughters, two small villages on the River Eye where the stream runs right alongside the lane.

The best driving of the day comes next, as the road climbs through Snowshill, where the fields turn purple with lavender in summer, up to Broadway Tower. Built in 1798 to an idea by the landscape designer Capability Brown, the tower stands on Beacon Hill, the second-highest point in the Cotswolds. On a clear day you can see across 16 counties from the top. It’s a good place to stop, stretch your legs and take in how far you’ve come.

Foxhill Manor is only a few minutes from the tower, on the 400-acre Farncombe Estate above the village of Broadway. It’s a manor house built in 1909, with just eight rooms and suites, each one named after a tree, and the views from the house stretch right across the Vale of Evesham.

The hotel likes to do things its own way. Rather than a set menu, the chef asks what you’d like to eat and when, and cooks it for you. For a group of friends at the end of a long day, it feels more like staying at a private country house than a hotel, and if you book the whole house, that’s exactly what it becomes.

By the time dinner is over, the cars are resting on the gravel, the sky is dark and the Vale of Evesham has gone quiet below. A day like this is about more than the driving. It’s about the friends you share it with, and the feeling of having earned a little time together. 

That’s a kind of success worth celebrating.