Oxford and Cotswolds Tour with Country Pub Lunch from London

London, England

11 hours (approx.)
Mobile ticket
Offered in: English

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Overview

Explore two parts of the UK on this group tour from London. You visit both Oxford and the Cotswolds, with plenty of stops for photos as you go. Have lunch in a country pub along the way, trying some hearty British fare to keep you energized. Your expert guide takes you to the Divinity School in Oxford, and to villages like Burford, Bibury, and more.

Easy to find meeting point in London
Lunch and drinks are both included for ease
Entrance to the Divinity School is included
Enjoy this group tour with your guide (max 16)

What's Included

Expert Guide
Entrance to the Divinity School, Oxford
Visit of the villages of Burford, Bibury and Stow-on-the-Wold
Lunch and Drinks

Meeting and Pickup

Meeting point

The Cumberland, Great Cumberland Pl, Marble Arch, London W1H 7DL, UK
Please wait outside the Cumberland Hotel main entrance, Marble Arch (formerly the Hard Rock Hotel). Nearest tube station is Marble Arch. Please arrive at the designated meeting point at least 10 minutes prior to the scheduled meeting time. This tour will depart at 07.30am.

End point

Victoria station
London SW1W 9LN, UK
Victoria Train Station at approximately 6:30pm. This is one of the largest transport stations in London, with excellent connections to all parts of London and beyond.

Operating hours
.7:30 am

Itinerary

Oxford

2 hours • Admission Ticket Free

Cotswolds

4 hours • Admission Ticket Free

Additional Info

Confirmation will be received at time of booking
Not wheelchair accessible
Near public transportation
Most travelers can participate
The Tour duration is set for 11 hours including the 5 hours for travel time

British weather can be variable and so guests are advised to check the weather forecast and dress appropriately. It is recommended to bring some warm clothes with you especially in the winter months and layers are good for adapting to the ever-changing weather conditions. It is a good idea to wear appropriate footwear as there is walking involved on our tours. England is known for its rain so it is advisable to bring a waterproof jacket or umbrella with you.
On Sundays this tour will run in reverse, starting with a tour of the Cotswolds and ending in Oxford. This is so the local shops are open when we arrive in Oxford.
Please note that The Divinity School may close on short notice, in these circumstances, we will include a visit to an alternative college if available.
This tour/activity will have a maximum of 16 travelers

Supplied by

Cancellation Policy

You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance of the experience for a full refund.

Reviews

3.8

based on 10 reviews

Total reviews and rating from Viator & Tripadvisor

We perform checks on reviews

Great Introduction to the Cotswolds and Oxford

Christiana_W, Sep 2024

Toby is a knowledgeable and engaging guide. We don't like large tour groups and this was the perfect size for us.

Wonderful!!

autumnfall51, Sep 2024

Tony, our guide, was fabulous and truly made this tour exceptional! He and our bus driver (who was also excellent) had a good working relationship, and the 2 of them added a couple of quick scenic photo stops, which weren’t included in our tour! I would highly recommend this excursion!

One of the best tours we have had

Susan_H, Sep 2024

Our fabulous guide Tony went above and beyond to show us unscheduled places that we enjoyed! Friends international was the way to go and request Tony

Good tour guide

Douglas_C, Aug 2024

Our guide Catharine and our driver Iman did their best to make the most of a bad situation. It poured down rain in Oxford, yet Catharine managed to show us the key points of the University. The Pub lunch was very good, and we enjoyed our photo stops in Burford and Bilbury. Unfortunately, we were stuck behind a major road accident on our way back to London. Even though we were later arriving back into London, they made sure that we were able to get back to our hotels. Very knowledgeable and professional.

Wonderful day

Julie_R, Jul 2024

We were only 2 in the tour so we could stop everywhere we wanted. We had a wonderful time with Steve, our guide, and Vugar, our driver. They were very knowledgeable and they pampered us all day. We loved the tour of the Cotswolds, the lunch at the pub was delicious. The visit of Oxford was a little too superficial for our taste. It was just enough for us to realise that we could spend a whole day there some day.

Extremely poorly-run tour

Naomi_C, Jun 2024

TOUR What was the primary reason we visited England? To experience the Cotswolds. This extremely poorly-run tour ruined our dream of experiencing the Cotswolds. The tour guide, Tony, was obviously seething with disgust for all people conservative, and let it be known loud and clear in his running leftist political commentary which lasted the entire tour. This, coupled with the fact that the vast majority of time on this tour was taken up by an extreme amount of driving between far-apart Cotswolds villages - not scenic, just tiring hours of driving, ruined what we most looked forward to on our vacation. The tour took us to stow-on-wold for lunch. Didn't get to walk around village, took an hour for lunch including getting waited on, receiving food & eating. Wasn't one of the better villages to see anyway, so shouldn't have wasted our time even going to this village with all the time spent driving to and from Stow-on-Wold. Burton would have been a wonderful village to have allowed us to spend 2-3 hours strolling, wandering, imagining and having lunch. Visitors want leisure time to do these things to really soak in the beauty and ambience of a beautifully representative Cotswolds village like Burton - without rushing. Instead we drove past it even though it was NOT crowded. It would have been much more enjoyable spending our time leisurely breathing in the ambience and sights of just a couple quintessential Cotswolds villages, rather than spending the vast majority of time driving boring roads in between distant villages. Instead of commentary on the history or beauty of what we were seeing, the tour guide continually made leftist political slurs. When the participants on the tour asked any question about how England accomplished something we were seeing, the tour guide turned it into a political commentary against conservatives. The tour guide said the current prime Minister who's conservative is bad & going to lose the upcoming election. He said England needs immigrants, needs workers, Brits won't do mundane work. That Britain should implement a much greater increase in immigration. He said that Angela Merkel got it. (The adults in the room are keenly aware of the horrors of crime that infiltrated Germany with Merkel's open borders policy). When looking at windmills, the tour guide said that windmills are great and it takes thinking & planning to implement them. The tour guide needs to educate himself about the disaster that windmills are, starting with slave labor to extract the materials from the earth, depleting precious natural resources to build them, disastrous carbon footprint transporting them, destruction of wildlife, and the negative offset in the net generation of energy vs no windmills, to name a few. The tour guide brought up a couple times during the tour that the current conservative prime minister changed the upcoming election dates in order to prevent voters who vote for the opposition party from voting. One of the times the tour guide talked about this was while touring Oxford when the tour guide stated the current conservative prime minister is intentionally preventing college students from voting bc they would vote for the opposition party. The guide said the way the prime minister is doing it is that the students are registered to vote at this Oxford college location. And knowing the students leave in summer to go home - that's when the prime minister changed voting to, so the students will be out of their voting district and won't be able to vote. We came a long distance, took time away from other things, and paid a lot of money for a vacation. In Oxford, we wanted to learn about the history and interesting facts about Oxford and it's people. We got very little of that, and worse, when the tour guide turned us loose for a short period to explore, he failed to tell us what there was to see, what were the interesting things to look for, and where to find them. People were wandering around lost, trying to figure out which way to go and what to look at. It was a total waste of our time. The tour guide said he can't narrate in front of one of the specific Oxford colleges - bc his narration included the fact Boris Johnson had been a student at that college. He said the college told him they don't want to damage their reputation of excellence. Which party was Boris Johnson? Conservative. When asked a simple question as to whether Oxford University offers courses in art, he answered yes, but the prime minister (who is conservative) is trying to stop that because he views it as worthless & he only wants science and math and courses like that. Nearly every question the tour participants asked, the tour guide turned into an opportunity to take a punch at conservatives, instead of giving us information about the history and beauty of what we were seeing. In his ongoing, leftist political commentary, the tour guide criticized the current conservatives in government bc he said they're requiring voter i.d. for the purpose of trying to prevent people who would vote for the opposition from voting. The tour guide said there's only ever been 4 voter fraud cases in the entire country and therefore no voter ID for anyone should be required. He sarcastically lambasted the conservatives for requiring voter ID. (Wow. ID is required to get discounts for some items, for entry into or membership in some businesses, to buy alcohol, etc, but shouldn't be required for the most fundamental and important role a CITIZEN has to play, voting for the leader of their country who determines the national defense, the economy, the well-being of the people, and the nation's position in the world). The tour guide said the woman in government who's currently in charge of immigration "hates immigrants", even tho she's one, so she's forced deportation of "asylum seekers" & immigrants. I'd be willing to bet she's conservative. The tour guide talked about what he said was a terrible policy that Margaret Thatcher had put in place, and called Thatcher "an evil witch". What political party was Margaret Thatcher? Conservative. The tour guide made exactly zero critical comments about liberal government officials, liberal policies and liberal voters. The tour guide, after making a torching accusation against conservative leaders, exclaimed "don't get me wrong I'm not on the far left or anything". Thou doth protest too much. Too late, he'd loudly revealed that he actually is, with his far left monologue for the entire trip. Driving thru Cotswolds he said "I could never live here, too conservative. This is your conservative voting district". Whether left or right, no one wants to hear a torching political commentary when they're on a tour trying to enjoy a day out. In addition to the running political monologue, he made other inappropriate and offensive comments throughout the day. The tour guide repeatedly exclaimed, when talking in a derogatory manner about something, "Jesus Christ!" as an expletive. This is extremely offensive to Christians. He also made several other extremely inappropriate and offensive comments during the tour, such as referring to the poor gentleman who missed our tour bus as "a vegetable". (The gentleman and his wife had missed our tour bus, and later connected up with us). We were on vacation, wanting to enjoy a lovely day out in one of the most beautiful areas in England. The number one reason we visited England. The last thing we wanted was to be subjected to a scathing, ongoing political lambasting. That, coupled with the endless driving between distant Cotswolds villages, and failure to allow us to spend a good amount of leisurely time exploring a quintessential village or two, and turning us loose with no map and no explanation as to what to see in Oxford, ruined the most important part of our vacation. I'll close with a comment to make it clear, the driver was excellent. He was silent during the entire trip and took all directions as to where to go, from the tour guide. The driver did a very good job driving. He had nothing to do with our poor experience.

Lovely day in the countryside

Jenna_M, Apr 2024

This was such a lovely day exploring the cotswolds and Oxford. Some how I lucked out on it being a solo tour. I was so appreciative of that the vendor didn’t cancel and also informed me of this. My guide, Tony was so knowledgeable and really catered the tour to my interests. The lunch was great and at a lovely little inn. Thank you so much for a great day!