On 'our own' golden pond in the Cotswolds
The joy of returning to a beloved place
There are a handful of destinations that, as a family, we have returned to time and again over the years, in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Brittany — and this place: a lake house in The Cotswolds.
Didn’t know there was a lake district in The Cotswolds?
Let me enlighten you: The Cotswold Water Park, near Cirencester, spans 42 square miles and incorporates around 180 fresh water lakes, created as a result of past quarrying.
There’s something hopeful and uplifting about the fact that the byproduct of these industrial processes is an area that now teems with wildlife — wintering birds, breeding birds and aquatic plant life.
Nature reclaiming its rightful place.
The area is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest, affording it and the wildlife within it, protection and active management. There are areas designated for holiday accommodation and other areas for activities — all manner of things from boat hire to the bike hire, from water skiing to wake boarding (certain lakes only, to protect wildlife); even a lake side beach.
Various developments of holiday homes have sprung up around the lakes in the last 25 years or so, from the swanky glass fronted constructions to New England style homes to more modest cabins.
The place we stay in was one of the first to be built, a beautiful, stone cottage, part of Mill Village on the Lower Mill Estate overlooking a large lake called Somerford Lagoon.
This makes it sound far-flung and vaguely exotic, like the setting for a wildly romantic movie or a nostalgic coming-of-age tale. It makes me think of Where the Crawdads or On Golden Pond, rather than a post industrial site, just off the dual carriageway, North of Swindon.
And in truth, it doesn’t feel particularly wild or secluded when you arrive — it’s nestled in a development contrived to look like a “chocolate box” English village, with a mixture of housing styles, the odd thatched roof thrown in. It’s part of a well-tended private estate with security gates, a 10mph speed limit and just enough facilities and activities to keep you and any kids occupied for a week and you can’t park just anywhere you have to use the allocated parking space and take your rubbish down to the recycling area. It’s that kind of place.
There are rules.
I’m not knocking that, all such developments have rules and instructions and you need them with new groups of people arriving and leaving all the time. It would be a bun fight otherwise.
But — and sigh — here’s the thing: sitting on that deck at the back of the house, looking south across the lake, you can’t see any of that.
All you can see is this:
The view from this angle is open, unspoilt (ie unbuilt-on) and at dawn and dusk, magical. You could be miles from civilisation and certainly a long way away from your troubles.
Which is the point.
There is of course a lot to be said for exploring new places (and I get it, there’s so much world to see!) but I do like the comfort, familiarity and for that matter, assurance, of returning to places I already know I love. And to be frank, places that aren’t going to involve the hassle of getting on a plane.
The lake house is not in fact our own (our only second home is a fantasy one). It belongs to friends of ours and although it’s rented out in high season, they’ve been very generous in letting us stay when it’s unoccupied. So we’ve spent the odd week there but since it’s only half an hour from where we live, a group of us would sometimes take our kids out there after school in the summer, for a swim and a picnic tea.
Over the years, there have been family lunches on the deck under the sun shade, kids padding about in kayaks on the sparkling water, languid afternoons by the communal pool, walks through the meadows and streams to local pubs, evenings of revelry involving too much bourbon, cosy films by the fire, nights spent looking up at the stars arguing about how far it was to the moon and a memorable Scooby Doo mystery birthday party in which the meddling kids had to paddle out to an island where they unmasked the baddie at the end (and he would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t… etc ).
It’s arriving and walking out on to that deck, or just glimpsing the lake from inside, when it’s blue and choppy with the wind wiping up waves across it like the sea. Other times it’s calm, the surface ruffled only by birds dipping, ducking and taking flight across it. I’ve seen shoals of fish, slivery in the moonlight, trails of ducklings following a mother duck, herons stalking around in the shallows, bats swooping around at dusk and clouds of mayflies as I walked along the footpaths by the lakes.
And every time I go, I long to stay on, and I wish it was mine and I enter that fantasy second home owner world, where you just magically have the money and the sun always shines and nothing goes wrong with the property and you don’t wake in the night wondering if last visitor switched off the immersion heater and remembered to remove their food waste.
Partly for those reasons, our friends are now thinking of selling up and I shall mourn its “passing” out of our hands for good.
And I suppose writing about it here is one way of clinging to a bit of that magic, evoking memories of wonderful times at ‘our own’ golden pond.
When I think about it now, it’s actually the being by the water that makes the biggest difference to me or I suppose, the getting away from it all.
And you don’t need a friend with a lake house for that — there are heaps of holiday homes for rent at The Cotswold Water Park and if you only have a day or a few hours, there are places all over the country you can seek out by lakes, rivers and coastal areas, at woodlands, country parks, city parks and beauty spots.
I shall return to this place in a future post with suggestions of things to do locally. Subscribe for more on this.