Take your seats on the luxury coach as you set off from Southampton northwards into the much loved Cotswold region of England, famous for its honey-coloured stone villages and leafy valleys. Your local guide has a wealth of information about this beautiful part of the world. Learn of the wool trade and how it played an important role in the shaping of the history of the area, and hear how the regions decline as a cloth producer saw the Cotswolds become a sleepy backwater, frozen in time. Thanks to the abundance of beautiful old houses in the Cotswolds it has often been used as a place for period dramas on film and TV. Your first stop is the charming village of Bampton which many of you will recognize as the village of Downton from the hit TV series "Downton Abbey". Here you can stroll around the village green and visit the church where a lot of major events took place on screen. See the Cottage Hospital, the post office, and Mrs Crawley's house. Drive along meandering lanes and rolling hills to the beautiful village of Burford where the ancient stone cottages seem to cascade down to the River Windrush. After a guided walk, you will enter an old tavern built in 1402 to have a delicious lunch amongst the old stone floors and wood fires. Continuing on your scenic drive you will head further northwards, arriving at Stow on the Wold with history going back to Roman times. Its vast market square would have held livestock fairs where up to 20,000 sheep would have been bought and sold. Visit the charming 16th century church and the Roman Wells. Stroll down the narrow alleys designed to keep the sheep in the square and the cold north wind out! Afterwards, continue your exploration of the Cotswolds, this time heading eastwards to take you to Heathrow airport and London to be dropped at your designated hotel or airport terminal.