{"id":710537,"date":"2026-07-25T13:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T13:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710537\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T13:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T13:26:12","slug":"our-beautiful-cotswold-village-has-become-blackpool-on-the-water-thanks-to-tourists-say-furious-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710537\/","title":{"rendered":"Our beautiful Cotswold village has become \u2018Blackpool-on-the-Water\u2019 thanks to tourists, say furious residents"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Once heralded by JB Priestley as the quintessential English village<\/a>, and known as the \u201cVenice of the Cotswolds<\/a>\u201d, Bourton-on-the-Water is at breaking point. <\/p>\n

Residents warn that the historic Cotswold destination <\/a>is being destroyed by an influx of daytrippers and Instagrammers. <\/p>\n

The area has always been popular with visitors, but that popularity has increased further in recent years thanks to picture-perfect shots on social media and celebrity links including to Clarkson\u2019s Farm<\/a> \u2013 Jeremy Clarkson was once rumoured to be buying a pub in Bourton.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a beautiful quintessential English village<\/a>, with so much heritage, and people want to see it,\u201d says Charlotte Joynes, chair of Bourton Residents Voice, which was formed to tackle the growing list of concerns among villagers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to share it, but at the moment, the hordes of people that are coming means we are just being destroyed. It\u2019s no longer the beautiful village that people think it is \u2013 it\u2019s more \u2018Blackpool-on-the-Water\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Search for Bourton-on-the-Water on Instagram and you\u2019ll quickly find a list of reasons not to visit in the summer. The village gets so busy, it\u2019s hard to even see the village green beneath the sea of deckchairs and picnic blankets.<\/p>\n

According to residents, the nature of tourism<\/a> has fundamentally changed since the Covid pandemic. While the village previously hosted international travellers from the US and Australia, who came for the architecture and supported the local economy by staying overnight and eating out, the current trend means increasing numbers of daytrippers are arriving from nearby towns and cities.<\/p>\n

\"Bourton-on-the-Water\u2019sBourton-on-the-Water\u2019s beautiful river attracts millions of tourists in the hot weather (Charlotte Joynes)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are coming with their own picnics, and all they\u2019re buying is an ice cream,\u201d says Joynes. \u201cThey are using apps to find free parking and clogging up our streets. The coach park is closed, and it\u2019s become a free-for-all with coaches in residential streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Residents in the village have reported tourists using hedges as toilets, leaving litter piled up beside bins<\/a>, and even taking chunks out of the iconic Cotswold stone wall to take home as souvenirs.<\/p>\n

Joynes, who has lived in the village for 34 years, estimates that between 5,000 and 10,000 visitors a day descend on Bourton \u2013 which only has a population of 4,000 people. The village green is often rammed with picnickers, and Joynes even reports seeing one family set up a table and chairs in the river and eat a full meal of fish and chips.<\/p>\n

\"Rammed:Rammed: the village green at Bourton-on-the-Water (Charlotte Joynes)<\/p>\n

\u201cI work in one of the pubs,\u201d she adds. \u201cWe do want visitors. It\u2019s the \u2018picnic-and-paddlers\u2019, as I call them, that aren\u2019t bringing anything to the economy. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have tourists moaning about tourists in Bourton. It\u2019s not our own village any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read The Independent\u2019s guide to the most beautiful places to visit in the Cotswolds<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get us wrong, Bourton-on-the-Water is one of our top locations within the Cotswolds, but for those looking for an idyllic day in the sunshine that rapidly turned into a day crammed onto a river bank with the rest of the country that had the same idea, we always wish we had a back up plan,\u201d writes holiday lettings company Boltholeretreats.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cBourton-on-the-Water today: one giant communal picnic where nobody knew whose mat they were sitting on anymore,\u201d writes doctor_with_a_suitcase.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A recent survey of 202 residents found that more than 90 per cent believed the current tourism levels in the village were not sustainable and had a negative impact on their quality of life. A total of 94.6 per cent of residents said they felt visitor numbers were excessive. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe quintessential Cotswold village in quieter times (Charlotte Joynes)<\/p>\n

Gloucestershire County Council has recently launched a consultation on transport and parking in Bourton-on-the-Water. It says: \u201cWe know people are concerned about pedestrian safety along the High Street and how vehicles, including coaches and buses, [are] affecting how people move around the village. We want to hear your experiences to shape the right solutions to ensure everyone can continue to enjoy this historically significant village.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CharlotteCharlotte Joynes, chair of Bourton Residents Voice (Charlotte Joynes)<\/p>\n

Bourton Residents Voice is calling for immediate intervention and describes the current consultation process as \u201can absolute farce\u201d, noting that consultees were not able to access a recent meeting with the county council on the issue as the link was broken.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like enforcement,\u201d says Joynes. \u201cThe coaches coming in are doing it illegally because of traffic regulations. But we don\u2019t have police to stop them. We want people to visit but respect where they\u2019re coming to.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a little village of 4,000 residents and we can\u2019t cope. We need to leave something for our future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-710537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}