Daylesford

Daylesford is not a village but an estate, and the most famous farm shop in England. It sits in the country between Kingham and Stow, on land farmed organically since the turn of the century, and what began as a shop selling the estate's own produce has become a destination in its own right: a food hall, restaurants, a cookery school, a spa, and a garden, all in immaculate Cotswold stone.

It is also a shorthand. Daylesford is where the moneyed weekend comes to shop, the Range Rovers nose to tail in the car park on a Saturday, and it stands at the centre of the version of the Cotswolds the glossy magazines mean when they say the word. The food is genuinely very good. The scene around it is its own spectacle.

This is the new money of the hills, the Friday-night arrivals, the second houses with the lights on two days in seven. It sits alongside the older, quieter Cotswolds without quite touching it.

Both worlds keep to themselves, in the end. One does it in a full car park, the other behind a closed gate, and the gate is the older custom.