I’m walking through water meadows of Thyme on what feels like the first day of spring.
‘It’s the vernal equinox at exactly 3.33pm today,’ explains Caryn Hibbert, founder of the Cotswolds hotel and cookery school, a time when the flora and fauna surrounding the property begins to come back to life. Hibbert has become somewhat of an expert on these things. Thyme, or Southrop Manor as it was previously known to locals, has been the home of the Hibbert family for nearly 20 years but its recent rise in popularity is thanks to a stellar cookery school and Ox Barn restaurant (headed up by Hibbert’s son Charlie, ex-Quo Vadis) and hotel, which sleeps up to 64 people in converted barns and cottages. No room is quite the same — a deliberate decision as an antidote to the cookie-cutter formula of other country retreats.
