Riverside Cottage by the fire at Christmas

Some cottages are made for summer. Riverside Cottage is at its best in winter, and Christmas is when it really comes into its own. It is the one I would choose for a couple, often down from London, wanting to go quiet for a few days, draw the curtains, and let the cold get on with it outside.

The ground floor is the heart of it in winter. A corner sofa, the fire on, the river running past the window in the dark. There is something about being right on the water in cold weather, the Coln a few feet away and you on the warm side of the glass, that you do not get in a cottage set back from things. The light off the river finds its way in even on the greyest afternoon, and once the early dark comes down, the room turns into exactly the sort of place you do not want to leave.

It is a proper old building, Grade II listed, seventeenth-century stone across three floors, with the beams and the low ceilings and a steep little staircase with a rope to hold. In summer that is charm. In December, with the weather doing its worst, it is the kind of solid old shelter that has kept people warm for three hundred winters and means it. The walls are thick, the windows are small and deep-set, and the whole place feels built to be inside on a cold night.

The bath under the eaves

At the top of the house, tucked beneath the roof, is the cottage’s most-loved corner: a roll-top bath in the bedroom, with the river on the other side of the window. On a cold night, with the world dark and the water moving below, it is about as good as a winter break gets. I will not labour the point. Couples who stay tend to tell me about that bath first, before anything else, and usually before they have even unpacked their thoughts about the rest of it.

The king bedroom keeps its view towards the water too, so you wake to the river whether you are up early or not. Most guests are not, in winter, and that is allowed. The terrace doors stay shut for the season, which is no loss in December, and it means the warmth stays in and the river stays where it belongs, on the far side of the glass.

The kitchen is well set up for the kind of stay where you do not much want to go out, which is most stays here in December. There is room to cook a proper supper and carry it through to eat by the fire, and a couple who have done a frosty walk and a warm pub at lunchtime are usually quite happy not to leave the cottage again until morning. That is rather the rhythm the place invites in winter, and I would not fight it.

An easy base for a cold few days

It is two minutes on foot to Arlington Row, so a frosty morning walk is on your doorstep and you are back before your hands go numb. That matters more in winter than in summer. You want the famous view, you want it cold and empty, and then you want to be indoors again quickly, and from Riverside Cottage you can do all three before breakfast.

Free public parking sits a minute away, which sounds like a small thing until you are arriving in the cold with bags and a dark afternoon closing in. And it welcomes a well-behaved dog, one of very few places in the village that does, so a wet coat steaming gently by the fire is no trouble here. A dog asleep on the hearth after a frosty walk is rather the picture of the place in December.

There is no on-site parking, and the stairs are steep, so it is not the cottage for everyone. But for a couple, with or without a dog, wanting somewhere warm and old and right on the water for a quiet Christmas, I do not think there is a better one in Bibury. The fire, the river in the dark, the bath under the eaves. That is the whole pitch, and it does not need dressing up.

If that is the sort of few days you have in mind, tell me your dates and I will let you know what is free. Christmas itself goes early, so it is worth asking sooner rather than later, but there is often more room either side of it than people expect.