The Cotswolds and Bath

The only place in Britain where you can actually bathe in natural thermal water, Thermae Bath Spa opened in 2006 in a glass-and-stone building by Nicholas Grimshaw, set among restored Georgian spa buildings. The highlight is the open-air rooftop pool, where you float in warm mineral water looking out over the abbey tower and the surrounding hills; it is especially atmospheric at dusk or on a cold, misty morning. Across the street, the small, open-topped Cross Bath is fed by one of the three springs and can be booked for shorter sessions.

TipSessions are timed and the spa gets very busy at weekends and in school holidays, so book ahead and come midweek if you can. The minimum age is 16.

At the heart of the city, hot water rises from deep underground at around 46°C, more than a million litres a day, as it has for thousands of years. Celtic Britons revered the spring as sacred to the goddess Sulis; the Romans identified her with Minerva and, from the first century AD, built a temple and an elaborate set of baths around it. The green, steaming Great Bath, open to the sky and ringed by later columns and statues, is the famous image, but the museum around it is just as rewarding: the gilt bronze head of Minerva, the carved Gorgon's head from the temple pediment, and the curse tablets, small sheets of lead on which Roman bathers scratched pleas to the goddess to punish whoever had stolen their cloak.

TipBook a timed ticket on the official website, the only authorised seller, and arrive at opening or in the last couple of hours to avoid the midday crush. Don't touch or drink the water in the baths themselves; you can taste the spa water in the Pump Room next door.

A church has stood on this site for well over a thousand years: England's first king, Edgar, was crowned here in 973. The present building was begun in 1499, after the bishop, Oliver King, is said to have dreamt of angels climbing ladders to heaven; the stone angels on the west front, climbing up and down, recall the story. Inside, huge windows fill the nave with light and the fan vaulting overhead is among the finest in England. Tower tours climb more than two hundred steps past the bells and the clock face to the roof, with views over the city's honey-coloured terraces.

TipTower tours are guided, run at set times and have limited places, and the abbey can close to visitors for services and events; check the timetable on the day.

Designed by Robert Adam and completed in 1774, Pulteney Bridge is one of only a handful of bridges in the world lined with shops along both sides, so that crossing it feels like walking down a small street. The best view is from below, on Grand Parade or the riverside path, looking across the horseshoe-shaped weir on the Avon. River cruises leave from near the bridge in season, and the Parade Gardens beside it are a pleasant place to sit.

Bath's two great set pieces of Georgian town planning sit a few minutes apart. The Circus, begun by John Wood the Elder and finished by his son in the 1760s, is a perfect ring of townhouses with three tiers of columns and a frieze of carved symbols. A short walk along Brock Street opens up the Royal Crescent, built by John Wood the Younger between 1767 and 1774: thirty houses forming a single sweeping curve of more than 150 metres behind a uniform façade, looking out over a lawn and Royal Victoria Park. Most of the houses are private homes or a hotel, but No. 1 Royal Crescent is a museum furnished as an eighteenth-century townhouse, from the drawing room down to the servants' kitchen.

TipWalk up from the abbey via Milsom Street or the Assembly Rooms, then return down through the park. The nearby Fashion Museum has been relocating, so check its status before planning around it.

Almost the whole village of Lacock is owned and cared for by the National Trust, which means no overhead wires, few modern shopfronts and a remarkable sense of stepping back a few centuries. Its four streets of timber-framed and stone houses, a medieval tithe barn and a fine church appear regularly in period dramas and films. Lacock Abbey, a former nunnery turned country house, has medieval cloisters and was the home of William Henry Fox Talbot, who made one of the earliest surviving photographic negatives here in 1835, a tiny image of an oriel window that you can still see. The Fox Talbot Museum by the gate tells the story of his invention.

TipPark in the National Trust car park outside the village and walk in; the abbey, cloisters and museum have their own opening hours, which are shorter in winter.

Often called the prettiest village in England, Castle Combe sits in a wooded valley at the southern end of the Cotswolds, where a stream called the By Brook runs beside the main street. Its fifteenth-century market cross, the stone cottages tumbling downhill to the bridge, and the church with its rare faceless medieval clock make a picture that has appeared in countless films. There is no castle to see, only the earthworks of a Norman one in the woods above. It takes only an hour to wander, but the walks along the valley are worth extra time.

TipCars are discouraged in the village itself. Use the car park at the top of the hill and walk down, and come early or late in the day: midday in summer can be very crowded.

The Victorian designer William Morris called Bibury the most beautiful village in England, and Arlington Row is the reason. This terrace of steep-roofed cottages began life in the fourteenth century as a monastic wool store and was converted into weavers' homes in the seventeenth; it has been famous enough to appear on the inside cover of British passports. The River Coln runs clear beside the road, past the water meadow of Rack Isle, and there is a trout farm at the other end of the village.

TipThe cottages are private homes, so stay on the public path and keep your voice down. Parking is very limited and the village is overwhelmed by coaches and cars on summer weekends; come early on a weekday, or walk in along the river from Coln St Aldwyns.

On the eastern edge of the Cotswolds at Woodstock, Blenheim is one of the grandest houses in Britain and the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in England to be called a palace. It was built from 1705 for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, as the nation's reward for his victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, and designed by Sir John Vanbrugh in a theatrical English baroque. Winston Churchill was born here in 1874, and an exhibition covers his life. Outside, the parkland was reshaped by Capability Brown around a great lake and Vanbrugh's Grand Bridge, with formal water terraces and gardens closer to the house. It has been a World Heritage Site since 1987.

TipAllow most of a day. Tickets are cheaper online, and in recent years a day ticket has been convertible into an annual pass; check the current terms. Oxford is only a few miles south.

At around 240 metres, Stow is the highest town in the Cotswolds, a hilltop market town where eight roads meet, among them the Roman Fosse Way. Its large square, once the scene of huge sheep fairs, is lined with old inns, antique shops and tearooms, and narrow passages called "tures" run off it, said to have been used to funnel sheep into the market. The parish church of St Edward has a north door flanked by two ancient yew trees growing into the stonework, a scene that some claim inspired Tolkien's Doors of Durin.

TipStow is a good base for the northern Cotswolds, with plenty of places to stay and eat and buses towards Moreton-in-Marsh station.

Despite the name, which probably comes from an Old English word for a muddy place, Upper and Lower Slaughter are two of the most peaceful villages in the Cotswolds. In Lower Slaughter, the little River Eye flows past cottages and under small stone footbridges to a nineteenth-century watermill with a working wheel. A mile upstream, Upper Slaughter is quieter still: a "doubly thankful village", one of very few in England that lost none of its men in either world war.

TipThe best way to see them is on foot. A footpath across the fields links Upper and Lower Slaughter and continues to Bourton-on-the-Water, making a loop of about two hours.

Nicknamed the "Venice of the Cotswolds", Bourton has the shallow River Windrush running right through its long green, crossed by a series of low, graceful stone bridges. On warm days families paddle in the river and sit on its banks. It is the most visited village in the region and has the attractions to match: a model village built of local stone at one-ninth scale, a motor museum and a bird park, as well as a great many tearooms.

TipBourton is at its best early in the morning or in the evening, after the day visitors have left. In peak season, combine it with the walk to the Slaughters for some peace.

Just outside the small town of Winchcombe, Sudeley is a castle with a story that runs right through Tudor England. Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's six wives, lived here with her fourth husband, Thomas Seymour, and died here in 1548; she is buried in the chapel of St Mary, the only English queen buried in a private home. The castle was slighted after the Civil War, and its romantic ruins of the banqueting hall stand alongside the restored house and award-winning gardens, including the Queen's Garden with its roses.

TipSudeley opens seasonally, generally from spring to autumn, with the family's private apartments closed. Winchcombe has good pubs and is on the Cotswold Way, with the Neolithic long barrow of Belas Knap a steep walk away.

Strictly in Worcestershire, Broadway is the archetypal grand Cotswold village: a broad, tree-lined high street of honey-coloured houses, inns and galleries running down from the escarpment. It was a coaching stop on the road between London and Worcester and later drew artists and writers of the Arts and Crafts movement. The Gordon Russell Design Museum celebrates the local furniture maker who championed good modern design, and the National Trust's Snowshill Manor, crammed with the eccentric collection of Charles Wade, is a short drive up the hill.

TipBroadway is busy at weekends but has more space than the smaller villages; park in the pay car parks off the high street.

Standing on Broadway Hill, one of the highest points in the Cotswolds, this castellated folly was built in the late 1790s for the Countess of Coventry, apparently so she could see it from her home in Worcester. On a clear day the view from the top takes in as many as sixteen counties, across the Vale of Evesham to the Malvern Hills and the Welsh mountains. William Morris stayed here, and the tower has displays on him and on the area's history; nearby is a restored Cold War nuclear observation bunker, open on some days. Red deer graze in the surrounding park.

TipWalk up from Broadway village on the Cotswold Way, a steep climb of around 45 minutes, and reward yourself in the café at the top.

For many, Chipping Campden is the finest of all the Cotswold towns. Its gently curving High Street is lined with houses from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, almost all in the warm local stone. The arched Market Hall of 1627, built by the wealthy local benefactor Sir Baptist Hicks for traders in cheese and butter, stands in the middle, and at the end of the street the church of St James is one of the great wool churches, its tall tower paid for by merchants like William Grevel. In 1902 the designer C. R. Ashbee moved his Guild of Handicraft here from London, and the Court Barn museum tells the story of the craftsmen who followed. The Cotswold Way starts at the Market Hall and climbs straight to Dover's Hill, home of the "Cotswold Olimpicks" since the seventeenth century.

TipWalk the whole High Street and then the lane past the almshouses to the church; the view back from the church gates is one of the best in the town.

Four miles north of Chipping Campden, Hidcote is one of the most influential gardens of the twentieth century. Its American-born creator, Lawrence Johnston, worked on it from 1907, dividing the hillside into a series of "garden rooms" enclosed by hedges of yew, beech and hornbeam, each with its own character, from the Red Borders to the White Garden and the long Stilt Garden. Johnston also collected plants on expeditions abroad, and many still grow here. It is now run by the National Trust, and in early summer it is at its peak.

TipOpening hours vary by season and the garden can be busy on fine weekends; arrive at opening. Kiftsgate Court Gardens, privately owned and with more limited opening, lie just across the lane.