Bourton-on-the-Water is in the Cotswolds, an historical and rural part of England that is just a bit North of us, I think. You know you’ve left Oxfordshire (our neck of the woods) when you start to see the golden-y stone buildings outnumbering the brick. It’s actually a really nice change of pace, because as an American, and recently a person trapped in LA, I really miss buildings that were not all the same color (ie. BRICK red).

Also in the Cotswolds: sheep. Sheep in fields. Fields surrounded by waist high stone pile fences. Fields on rolling hills. It’s so scenic, like right out of a BBC miniseries series (probably a few of them actually…) scenic. I’ve now gone through a few villages in the Cotswolds and, yeah, they are pretty much all ridiculously adorable and surrounded by equally charming landscape. Panoramas of idyllic countryside everywhere you look, living there I’m sure it would lose its charm and start reminding me of Tillamook way too quickly, but just visiting is pretty much the definition of delightful.

Bourton-on-the-Water is home to a tiny model village of Bourton-on-the-Water, which is in turn home of a tinier model village of the model village of Bourton-on-the-Water, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, etc. (Well, not really, but there are four layers to this, so yeah, pretty impressive.

We were the first people to arrive at the model village and after walking through a very tall and toothy turnstile (seriously, you’d think they were guarding the crown jewels or something), we came out of hall way to overlook a pretty sizeable village – in miniature! The village complex is pretty big, like about the size of almost a gymnasium and it features the stream which meanders through Bourton-on-the-Water. The individual buildings stand anywhere between waist and almost shoulder level. They are laid out just like the town (kind of the point, I know) and where possible they seem to feature the actual shops that are in the buildings. For instance, the tiny post office features the post office logo and poster about exchange rate prices and postage rates. The churches feature imitation stained glass windows and when you get down close enough to them you can hear the choral/organ music playing inside. Wandering around the little roads and peering into these tiny buildings is definitely a Gulliver’s Travels kind of giant stomping awesome feeling, and the fact that some of the little houses have furniture and curtains and people inside also makes it a tiny bit voyeuristic. I totally loved the whole package. But, most especially pretending the crush things, because who wouldn’t?

The other fantastic part about the model village was a set of mechanical miniature scenes. One of the circus and one of a mint. I loved them both, I love that they were designed and crafted and built and the technology to do so has nothing to do with digital. It’s kind of strange how rare that is in our daily lives and it’s nice every once and awhile to see it. I love my iPad, but this is a tiny working thing that a person built and all of its tiny moving parts make it a whole 3d multi sense perception-al thing. I’m not sure I’m saying that right, but whatever, I know what I mean.

More to come.

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