Broadway Tower

A year or two ago, I was browsing in a local book shop, when the cover of an Ordnance Survey map caught my eye. It showed a beautiful, golden castle on a hill, which looked like an incredible place to visit. A bit of googling told me that it was Broadway Tower, and I mentally made a note that I'd like to go there one day, but I pretty much forgot about it until Covid began last year. Since then, I've tried to make the most of the less than ideal situation of being stuck living in a small village, by exploring as much of my local area as I can, including plenty of attractions in the Cotswolds. I've been keeping a list of nearby places to visit (which I've now nearly completed), and this week, Broadway Tower was the destination of choice.

Slightly disappointingly, the tower is much smaller and far less golden than it looked in the photo in the bookshop. But it was still nice to see it in real life - it's a very pretty building.

My dad and I actually went up the tower, which was a very interesting experience. There are three rooms inside (one on each floor) which have been preserved to represent the late 18th century time period when it was built. And being up on the roof was a real highlight; the tower is on the second highest hill in the entire Cotswolds area, and in theory, you can see across 16 counties of England and Wales from the top. The morning was a bit misty, so we couldn't see quite that much, but we still had some amazing views from up there. The best thing was that we could see a beautiful group of deer close to the tower!

After visiting the tower and going for a walk around the grounds, we visited one of the on-site cafés, where I had a delicious matcha latte and vegan lemon drizzle cake!

All in all, it was a nice little day out, and I'm glad to have finally visited this place which had interested me for quite a while.

I'll be going on another family outing tomorrow, and may be writing about that soon. And I also have some more Country Guides and Travel Tips articles in mind, so I'll have plenty to write here over the coming weeks and months!