The Lion in Winter: The Cotswolds and London in February

We're off. To get roses in our cheeks and sleet down our necks in and around London in February. Our plan? Escape London straight away by train, trek the Cotswolds through drizzly copses and over deserted Iron Age barrows to firelit pubs for Ploughman's lunches, a pint of bitter, and Gloucester cheese.

We'll stay in Stroud, that whirling astral center from which radiate all things Cotswold. It's not easy to choose an astral center base-camp, and we may have things all wrong. However, Stroud is on the train line, an hour and a half and L20 from Paddington Station, and harbors an inn called, brace yourself, "Little Owl Cottage" that appears in its web site (http://littleowlcottagebedandbreakfast.co.uk) photos gazing gently down over sward and weald, its honey-brown stone characteristically Cotswold, stone, by the way, which becomes paler as you go south down the Cotswold limestone, glowing vaguely in the evening light.

At some point, we are required to wipe our muddy boots and return to London, where Brian will talk to construction people about construction topics, principally, how to keep construction workers from falling off tall things. In the City, we can't agree where to stay. I'm stumping for Epping Forest Youth Hostel which is described as being easily accessible, only 10 minutes on the train from London and then two and a half miles "down unlit forest roads." I think that sounds great.
Brian would like to stay somewhere a little more central.