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Batsford Arboretum is near Moreton-in-Marsh, not far from Stow-in-the-Wold, which we reach via the Slaughters (Upper and Lower).  You turn left instead of right which takes you to Bourton-on-the-Water.  Yes, it's in the Cotswolds!

It was a lovely sunny day - which brought a significant number of people out.  The clue is in the word arboretum, so basically trees, but it didn't strike me as very pretty.  We were also surprised at how small it was, we set off along one path and were surprised at how quickly we reached the end.

This is Batsford church, which is just outside the boundary.  The church was rebuilt in 1861 of Ashlar limestone, a local Cotswold stone:



The gardens were created in the early 1890s by Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford (grandfather of the Mitford girls) who had worked for the Foreign Office in the Far East and wanted to have a garden based on his observations at the time. 



Amongst other things he included a Japanese rest house.  Photographed because of the dragon on the roof.



He also had the stream built:



This is Sister's Pool with waterlillies:



It was a pleasant visit, but not somewhere I'd go back to.  We'd had it recommended by a friend of SM's and it was somewhere we hadn't visited before, so it was worth a trip.

On the way back we decided to celebrate the break by having lunch, and ended up having an excellent meal at a local Beefeater, which we had to agree, was the highlight of the day.

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