‘In summertime on Bredon/The bells they sound so clear,’ wrote A E Housman. There are other sounds, too, in the Cotswolds in high summer: choral and orchestral music at the Three Choirs Festival, masterworks ancient and modern at the traditionally enterprising Cheltenham Festival; and opera at Longborough.
Heeding George Bernard Shaw's advice ‘nothing is easier than not to go to Gloucester’ – he was dodging the 1892 premiere of Hubert Parry's – I skipped this year's Three