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Ashford House
Stone path through misted Cotswold meadow beside the walled garden at dawn

Experiences

Days, gently arranged.

Nothing here is compulsory and nothing needs booking months ahead. Most of what follows is arranged the evening before, over a drink, once we know what sort of day you would like. Some of it is simply a door left unlocked and a pair of boots by it.

Misty footpath through beech woodland at dawn in the Cotswolds
The ridge path, first light

On foot

Out of the door and into the valley.

Three marked walks leave from the gravel court: an hour to Ashford Ridge and back, a half day along the old drovers' track, and a longer loop through two villages that conveniently passes a pub at the right moment.

Boots, sticks and a hand-drawn map are kept by the boot room door. The dawn walk is guided, complimentary, and returns before the house is properly awake.

Dawn walk
Daily · Guided · Complimentary
Routes
Three, from one to five hours
Kit
Boots and flasks lent by the house
Clipped box hedging and gravel paths in the walled garden at Ashford House
The walled garden, looking east

Gardens & grounds

Two walled acres, and nine beyond them.

The walled garden is worked every morning and open to guests all day. Wednesday afternoons, between April and October, you can cut and pick alongside the head gardener and cook a single dish from what came out of the beds an hour earlier.

Beyond the wall: the beech avenue, the orchard, the meadow left long for the bees, and a bench at the top of the rise that catches the last of the light.

In the garden
Wednesdays, 2pm · £60
Grounds
Nine acres, open to guests
Season
April to October
A steel bicycle leaning against a dry stone wall on a Cotswold lane
The cart shed bicycles

By bicycle

Lanes that were never built for speed.

Six steel bicycles live in the old cart shed, kept for guests and lent with a route card and a puncture kit nobody has yet needed. The lanes here are single track, walled and largely empty.

The short circuit takes in the water meadows and returns for lunch; the long one crosses the ridge to a village with a bakery worth the climb. Electric bicycles can be arranged with a day's notice.

Bicycles
Six · Complimentary
Routes
12km and 34km
Electric
By arrangement
A quiet honey-stone Cotswold village street at dusk
The village, half past six

Villages & houses

The Cotswolds, without the coach park.

Stow-on-the-Wold is ten minutes, Kingham fifteen, Daylesford twenty. We will tell you honestly which are worth a morning and which are better admired at dusk, when the day visitors have gone and the stone turns the colour it is famous for.

Further out: Chastleton House and its unrestored Jacobean rooms, the gardens at Sezincote and Hidcote, Blenheim within the hour. Tickets, timings and a car with a driver can all be arranged at the desk.

Nearest village
Ten minutes by car
Historic houses
Chastleton, Sezincote, Blenheim
Driver
By arrangement, per half day
A candlelit treatment room in a converted stone dairy
The old dairy

Stillness

One room, one therapist, no menu.

The treatment room is in the converted dairy, where the stone keeps the air cool and the light stays low. Oils are pressed twenty miles away and chosen after a short conversation rather than from a card.

Most guests book on arrival, for the afternoon of the second day — by which point they generally know what they need.

Treatments
Sixty or ninety minutes
From
£120
Booking
At the desk, on arrival

Through the year

What the season allows

The house keeps the same rhythm all year; the days around it do not.

  • Spring

    Blossom in the orchard, lambs in the lower field, and the first cutting from the garden.

  • Summer

    Long light until ten, dinner carried outside, and river swimming below the village.

  • Autumn

    Mushrooming with a guide, mist in the valley, and fires lit from the first cold morning.

  • Winter

    Frost walks, the cellar tasting, and whole afternoons that require nothing at all.

Arranged by the house

Booked the evening before

Ask at the desk, or mention it in your enquiry and we will hold a place.

Enquire

Tell us what the days should feel like.

Whether that is walking from breakfast to dusk or nothing more strenuous than a bath and a book, we will arrange it around you.

Or write to stay@ashfordhouse.co.uk. We reply personally, usually within a day.

Elsewhere at Ashford House