After a long walk in The Shire-like hills of the Cotswolds, it is nice to come home to spend the evening grabbing a pint of the golden ale and a decent meal at the Green Dragon Inn…

The Green Dragon Inn was a popular inn of Bywater and was frequented by Hobbits from both Bywater itself and the neighboring settlement of Hobbiton. In The Lord of the Rings, the Innis only mentioned. Th inn which was visited by the hobbits was the Ivy Bush in Hobbiton. But in the Peter Jackson movie The Ivy Bush was replaced by The Green Dragon Inn.

When I was looking for accomodation in different parts of the Cotswolds, I didn’t look for the name Green Dragon Inn, but I stumbled upon this when I searched booking.com and found this rather cozy and old looking Inn in Cockleford. It didn’t immediately ring a bell, but suddenly I had a EUREKA moment and where before that moment I was still a bit in doubt of booking this accomodation, after that moment I was absolutely sure that i wanted to book this, even if it meant rescheduling my journey :-).

On the photos that are on the booking.com website, it immediately felt warm, comfortable, pleasant and typicallly English and yes, although I didn’t realized this immediately, it felt Hobbit-ish 🙂

I did spent a couple of nights here, so I could use the Inn as a base for walks in the country side. I remember a conversation I had with the Inn keeper. I was in serious doubt wether this Inn could have been the inspiration for Tolkien’s famous Green dragon Inn in Bywater (Lord of the Rings), because maybe the Inn was named after the Inn in the book. But the Inn keeper told me that althoough the Inn had another name before this one (The cockleford Inn), it was decades before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were written that its name was changed to The Green Dragon Inn. So that was settled: this Inn could have been the inspiration. It is also likely because Tolkien knew the Cotswolds very well, liked them (and as i will try to prove later in an upcoming blog), was inspired by The Cotswolds when he invented The Shire. However it must be noted that The green Dragon is a rather common name foe inns in England, but having said that, I couldn’t find another one within The Cotswolds.

The interior of the inn had lots of wooden furniture, wooden roof beams, a hearth and it was build with typical yellow Cotswolds stones. The furniture was handmade and the artist found room for a small joke. He included mice on every piece of furniture, like the mouse at the table border in the above picture…

As could be expected from a Hobbit-ish like Inn, there was a wide choice of draught beers and bottled beers as well and the food was good but sturdy, which is a good thing after a days walk.

I really enjoyed my stay at the Green Dragon Inn

The food was delicious and I tasted some good Bitter’s too…

The wood beam roof looked great…

I found this picture on the wall of a pheasant couple just like the many pheasants I had seen while hiking today.

Cranberry’s and mozzarella…

“Oh you can search far and wide,
You can drink the whole town dry,
But you’ll never find a beer so brown.

Oh you’ll never find a beer so brown.

As the one we drink in our hometown,
As the one we drink in our hometown.
You can drink your fancy ales,
You can drink them by the flagon,
But the only brew for the brave and true…
..Comes from the Green Dragon!!”

There were dragons on the furniture…

Finally there was a great array of beers to be tasted…