I visited the pretty Cotswolds village so full of tourists locals 'stay in after 10am'

What could be more of a quintessentially English day out than a visit to the Cotswolds which, as one coach tour operator told me, offers his guests "beautiful countryside, rolling hills, charming villages and cream tea"?

But at risk of being as controversial as discussing which should be lathered on a cream tea scone first, the jam or the cream, I found my first foray to a village in the undoubtedly stunning region rather troubling.

Now, I should clarify when I say troubling, this wasn't down to the gorgeous architecture, the country lanes, babbling rivers and geese and ducks eager for a breaded morsel.

No, what struck me most was that it was quite hard to see all the charming lovely bits of the place, because of all the other people who were there with me.

Granted being the last August Bank Holiday Monday before the schools reopened you would expect high numbers of visitors. However, surprisingly locals in the stunning village of Bourton-on-the-water told me what I perceived as hordes was "quite quiet".

Bourton is known locally as the "Venice of the Cotswolds" because of its little bridges and pathways which straddle the quaint knee-deep River Windrush lazily flowing through the centre.

On the day I visited, there was also an annual football match being played by Bourton Rovers Football Club, this particular fixture being of note because it is a 30-minute match played in the river itself as part of a tradition going back over 120 years.

That sense of a time warp is noticeable in Bourton, it is a traditional old Cotswolds village with narrow roads and old houses which if it was just a tad quieter, would feel like stepping back into the past.

But like many other locations around the world, the village is suffering from the very modern plague of social media photographs.

More and more people are visiting the area from all over the world seeking their own Instagram or TikTok postable image of the perfect picture of an English village, and their visits are self-fueling as every new post creates someone else who wants to re-create it.

In reality, out of shot of the posed photograph, there are probably thousands of people, plus several rows of unsightly large bins needed to combat litter and a large amount of shops solely geared towards tourists rather than locals.

Visitor numbers are reportedly over one million a year for a village of just over 3,200 residents, and people living there told me despite all the trade tourists might bring to some venues, buying locally-sourced cheese or meat was virtually impossible and many never bothered to venture out when it was busy.

Jon Wareing, a District Liberal Democrat councillor, revealed: "The joke among residents is don't come to the village after 10am, if you go in at all, and we live here.

"For most people that must sound really odd, because the place that is your community should be a place you can access and feel comfortable in."

It's clear though that residents still love living in Bourton, and you can imagine why, on a quiet day it must be like living in a dreamland.

Mr Waering himself has lived here 30 years and simply wants a different approach to managing tourism, a wider exclusion zone on coaches for example, and more local produce available in shops.

Business owner Kirsten Ng, who runs the beautiful Box Bush cafe in the village, told me what locals need is free parking, as many were excluded because of paywalls on car parks and overtourism.

She said: "It's really interesting because as a business a lot of people say the local business relies on all the tourists and actually we find the opposite, local customers get driven out when you get too many people here.

"Actually that makes it really difficult to run your business, and the biggest problem we face as a business is all the other Cotswold villages have free parking for villagers.

"This is the only one that has no free parking for the local community, which stops our ability to trade with all the satellite villages, which is really what you need to trade 365 days a year."

To conclude, I'd still definitely recommend visiting Bourton, and the Cotswolds is still undoubtedly one of the most beautiful regions in the UK.

But I left thinking that for local people the scales have tipped too far in favour of those people visiting and there needs to be a shift back to focus on those people actually living there.