The model village in the beautiful Cotswolds

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Last Updated on 6th November 2021

Who doesn’t like a good model village? But what about standing next to your hotel room in a model village. Or better still seeing a model village in a model village in a model village in a village. If you head to the one in Bourton-on-the-Water that’s exactly what you can do. It being the only grade II model village in the country.

The Model village is of the actual village

This particular attraction doesn’t contain the global wonders of the world, all in one convenient spot. So don’t expect to see Big Ben next to the Sydney Harbour Bridge or a waist high version of Paris’ Eiffel Tower. No instead this is of the actual village that you’re actually in!

We headed to Bourton-on-the-Water as part of a romantic break in The Cotswolds which also included horse riding, duck racing (watching – not riding), cream tea eating, “pottering”, but best of all visiting this little model attraction. In fact it was so good I went twice in the same day!! It’s a 1/9 replica of Bourton-on-the-Water built in local Cotswolds stone, was opened in 1937 and is the only grade 2 listed model village in the country.

If you want to see more of The Cotswolds then check out these top 3 trips below 🙂

They’ve even added a realistic river

It’s a very twee thing to visit but equally quite wonderful, and the perfect thing to do on a Summer’s afternoon in the British countryside. There’s even the River Windrush running through the village. This shot above shows the effort they’ve made to get the bushes to look like trees that would be 9x bigger in real life! So apart from soaking up the painstaking attention to details what fun things can you do when you’re in there?

Re-enact a real life and model village photo

Take some low shots to re-inact actually being at ground level. Find your hotel and then get your girlfriend to stand next to your room so she looks like a giant. Then try to capture the exact same shot in real life later that afternoon with your friend/boyfriend/girlfriend in the same spot. We stayed at the delightful Dial House Hotel which commands one of the best spaces in the village, is neatly set back off the road with copious grounds behind it. Our room was up in the roof overlooking the river. Here’s our model/real shot that we tried to line up as best we could.

Get down low on the floor and take pictures your friends might think are ‘real’ shots when they are not. So here’s the Bourton-on-the-Water Post Office in the main High Street. On busy days there are always going to be people in the background. So these guys in the background kind of give the game away 🙂

Now for the mind-blowing part!

If you want to blow your mind away go to the part of the exhibition next to the exit. The pièce de résistance of the attrtaction. That’s where you get to see a model village in a model village in a model village in the village. The smallest of them does get a bit unrecognisable. How much smaller could they actually go!?

Visiting was the perfect way to while away an hour. More information can be found on their website at https://theoldnewinn.co.uk/model-village.com/.

Also see what our Dial House hotel stay was like during a July 2020 stay now we live in a temporary state of pre-vaccine coronavirus.

Before you go check out some more of my other British countryside posts.

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