| Are the Cotswolds Just Chiswick with the Odd Organic Cow? | |||||
Hotel reviewer’s amusing take on staying in ‘rural W4’
“All the normal, sheep-dating, straw-chewing, pitchforking folk were carted off a long time ago to somewhere less bucolic and replaced with herds of west London creatives, the sort who like to tell each other how pleased they are to have moved out of the smoke – even though they haven’t, because the Cotswolds is just Chiswick with the odd organic cow.” writes The Times’ Matt Rudd. He is in ‘rural Chiswick’ to check out a hotel that’s apparently too cool for its guests where he discovers there are ‘no pubs, only gastropubs with aïoli and cracked pepper and shiitake-mushroom omelettes. And where there are no shopkeepers, only artisans.’ Sound a little familiar? Rudd’s derisive critique of the uber-pretentious hotel Cotswold88, begins when he attempts to navigate the website which is ‘wedged firmly up its own cyber-sphincter’. He leaves the reader in no doubt that the Cotswolds are not his cup of tea - which incidentally costs a whopping £5.70 at the country hotel which does not allow ‘wind jackets and walking boots’ in their restaurant nor to they allow children after half seven and ‘one must reduce one’s noise level at night so as not to upset neighbours’. Who would they be then, the odd organic cows?
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