8 reasons to visit Cheltenham, UK
With over 2,500 listed buildings, Cheltenham’s eye-catching architectural heritage, provides an immaculately preserved tribute to Regency elegance, drawing visitors from afar.
King George lll’s interest in Cheltenham’s warm spa waters alleged medicinal benefits prompted a rush of visitors to Cheltenham, raising the town’s status and making it a haven for the affluent.
Neo-classical splendour, fluted columns and grand porticos, lived on beyond The Regency years, and through the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. With proud Cheltenham patrons adding spacious green parks to the town’s welcoming appearance.
1. Pittville Pump Room
Pittville, a mile from the centre of Cheltenham, was imagined as a grand Pittville Pump Room, by Joseph Pitt, to rival the town’s spa.
Today no waters are drawn but Pittville Park with its aviaries, children’s playground, fishing, ornamental lakes, lawn and tennis club is a favourite leisure destination for Cheltenham people and visitors to the town.
2. Montpellier
Begun in the Regency period, Montpellier was named to emulate the grandeur of the French town on the French Riviera. Over recent decades Montpellier had become increasingly grand with its exclusive boutiques, hairdressers, galleries and restaurants. Begun in the Regency period, Montpellier was named to emulate the grandeur of the French town on the French Riviera.
Between the famous white caryatids, Ancient Athenian style draped female sculptures, cafes spill onto the pavement.
3. Prithvi restaurant
Cheltenham is renowned for its variety of excellent restaurants. At Prithvi, meaning “Earth” or “Mother Earth” in Sanskrit, east meets west in a fine dining venue that has picked up countless awards.
Privthi is far from a conventional Indian restaurant. Classically trained Chef Tom Law works with owner Jay Rahman to bring European techniques to delicately refined sub-continent tastes. No raging vindaloo heat here, just subtle, sophisticated flavours.
Artichoke velouté, on the seven-course taster-menu, epitomises Privthi’s cross-cultural creativity. “Try to get a taste of every layer on to your spoon,” encourages our waitress, as we scoop up thinly sliced pickled artichoke and creamy velouté sprinkled with crunchy crushed pistachio.
Everything you need to plan your trip in 2025
🌟 Luxury hotel deals from Booking
🏡 Vacation rentals from VRBO
✈️ Flights from KIWI
🛫 Private jets from Private Jet Finder
🅿️ Airport parking from ParkVia
🛋️ Airport lounges from Priority Pass
🚖 Airport taxis from Welcome Pickups
🚗 Car rentals from Discover Cars
🚐 Luxury RV rentals from RVshare
🚢 Cruises from Cruise Direct
🛥️ Ferries from Direct Ferries
🎫 Attractions tickets from Tiqets
🏞️ Tours from Viator or GetYourGuide
🛡️ Travel insurance from Safety Wing
🏥 Medical insurance from World Nomads
🧳 Luggage from Case Luggage
🛅 Luggage storage from Stasher
📚 Travel guides from Lonely Planet
📕 eBooks from Kindle Unlimited
🎧 Audiobooks from Audible
🎬 Movies from Prime Video UK
🎵 Music from Amazon Music UK
💶 Travel currency from Wise
📱 SIMs from SimOptions
🌐 VPNs from ExpressVPN or NordVPN
🛂 Visas from iVisa
4. Kibou restaurant
Centrally located in Regent Arcade, Kibou’s decor, with its bold murals, cherry blossom canopies, vibrant neon signs and open kitchens, takes diners on a culinary journey to Japan.
A vast menu encourages diners to sample sashimi and sushi whilst also going tapas-style to explore Japanese favourites through small plates investigation. Looking around the buzzing restaurant, every table was taking a different route through exciting Far Eastern tastes.
The spectacular colours and symmetry of the Volcano Roll, sealing in avocado and salmon flavours, is as much art as its mouth-watering.
Dynamite Pawns may sound incendiary, but their taste quotient certainly outweighs their heat on the Scoville chilli heat chart. Whatever your choices, make sure you save room for the matcha cake with ice cream.
5. Sudeley Castle
A mere six miles from Cheltenham, in Winchcombe, sits Sudeley Castle. Historian David Starkey’s film blunt commentary explains why the castle changed hands so frequently and dramatically in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries: the monarchs rewarded men who were doing well with a castle as a gift. If they made a mistake they lost both the castle and their head.
In 1649, after the Civil War, the castle was “slighted”; made unfit for defence by the victorious Roundheads. Since the 19th century the crenelated castle and its many gardens have been impressively restored.
Sudeley’s chapel houses the grave of Henry Vlll’s sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr. Freed of her duty on Henry’s death, with indecent haste she married Thomas Seymour, the love of her love, a mere two months after she was widowed. There was no happy ending. At the age of 36, Katherine died of purple fever, just five days after giving birth to a daughter. She became the only English Queen buried on private land.
6. Ian Coley Sporting’s Shooting School
On the south eastern fringes of Cheltenham, Ian Coley Sporting’s Shooting School introduces clay pigeon shooting.
Offering a “Have a go 25”, instructors equip beginners with appropriate weight guns, eye-protectors, shoulder padding for the recoil, cartridges and an essential safety briefing. Such is the quality of the friendly instruction, quickly identifying dominant eyes and tendencies to raise the chin from the gun, that we are soon surprisingly hitting clays.
Alongside the country clothing store, sits the gun shop. There aficionados can buy a gun off the shelf or be measured up for a bespoke model. “Even an eighth of an inch can make a difference,” says Alex who does the measuring. Some customers, who’ve ordered from Beretta travel to Italy’s Gardone Valley to watch their gun being made.
7. Civic splendour
Back in 1716, the discovery of a warm spring of water transformed Cheltenham from a quiet small town into the place to be seen in Regency England.
Cheltenham grew rich from the affluent visitors who came to take the waters, funding extensive civic construction and the creation of green public parks.
An extravagant sculpture of Neptune, pulled by four sea horses, has a look of Rome’s Trevi Fountain, illustrating the town’s grand aspirations.
8. Cotswold Grange
Between town centre and Pittville Park, Cotswold Grange, a 20-room boutique hotel is just a short stroll from the best of Cheltenham’s attractions.
Located in a quiet conservation area, the house was originally built in 1856 for a wealthy merchant, the grand house provides historical elegance throughout rooms that have been individually styled.
With ample parking, guests can park-up and then walk to all that the Festival Town has to offer. Currently, the Visit Cheltenham website has 36 festivals listed for 2025: including cricket, food and drink, horse-racing, jazz, literature, music, poetry, pride and science.
Disclosure: Our stay was sponsored by Visit Cheltenham and Cotswold Grange.
Michael Edwards
Michael Edwards is a travel writer from Oxfordshire, UK. Although Michael had his first travel pieces published nearly four decades ago, he is still finding new luxury destinations to visit and write on.
Did you enjoy this article?
Receive similar content direct to your inbox.
Indian food is my favourite cuisine BUT why don’t Indian restaurants learn from Prithvi?
Food doesn’t have to be tongue-burning hot to be good. As the review on Prithvi says, there are plenty of great flavours for chefs to use without over doing the chillis.
I was amazed by the subtlety of the flavours over a 7 course taster menu. If you think 7 courses could be too much (it wasn’t for us!) they also offer 5 course or 3 course menus. Without doubt the best “Indian” restaurant I’ve been to though Prithvi draws on many influences.
Those Sudeley gardens put me to shame as I think about heading out for a spot of Bank Holiday gardening. They knew how to do gardens back in the day.
The gardens are a treat in themselves ranging from the formal gardens to the physic (medical) gardens.
If I’m looking for Regency grandeur I prefer Cheltenham to Bath.
I would agree that there’s certainly more well-preserved Regency grandeur in Cheltenham. Of course, if you’re touring the best option is to do both. They both have their charms.
I’ve not been to Japan or Cheltenham so I can’t comment on how authentic Kibou is. However, I love Kibou’s food in Oxford which is excellent.
Sadly, I haven’t been to Japan either so I can’t comment on how authentic Kibou is. It compares very favourably with other Japanese restaurants that I’ve tried. Considering we visited on a dull Thursday evening it was absolutely packed. From what I saw booking ahead is essential.
Although it’s a few miles out of Cheltenham you did right to include Sudeley Castle as a highlight.
It is a full day out. When we did it the guide was absolutely brilliant bringing all the history to life and usually I’m not really an history person.
All the different gardens are kept in good condition.
To do justice to Sudeley you probably should allow 5 or 6 hours at least.
There were a lot of visitors making a day of it and the cafe was very busy at lunchtime. With outside seating available too, everybody got served.
We’ve done Cheltenham by train from London for a weekend and I think the train took us just under 2 and a half hours. Which was long enough for a G & T and to start to forget about office life. The only problem was that we had to go back to London on the Sunday evening to be back in work on the Monday morning.
Steve, Perhaps next time you should consider making it a long weekend as there’s a lot to do.
We live on the eastern side of Cheltenham and when we have family and friends staying we direct them to Sudeley Castle and without exception they always come back saying that they’ve had a great day. Considering that the Roundheads did their best to destroy it, the castle’s looking in decent shape. Kids love the gory story of the discovery of Katharine Parr’s grave.
Great idea. Gives you plenty of time to clear up after breakfast and have several hours of rest, whilst they enjoy Sudeley before meeting up again.
There’s no place that brings out my inner Bridgerton more than Cheltenham. It’s so Regrncy, so elegant.
I always assumed that Bridgerton had been filmed in Cheltenham but apparently not!
Those 2 pictures of the Pittville Pump Room and the lake give a fair idea of what a beautiful relaxing place the park is. Last time we were there we spent a couple of hours walking round the park, sitting and watching the ducks on the lake and having a coffee. On a nice day it’s a lovely place to take it easy.
As you can see from the sun-lit pictures I visited on a glorious spring morning and people were making the most of the park. Joggers, walkers, dog-walkers and tennis players were all out enjoying themselves whilst others opted for an al fresco breakfast or coffee at the cafe.
I get the impression that my boyfriend would like to have a go at clay pigeon shooting and it’s only about a 40 minute drive to Cheltenham. I’d be happy to go along with him for a try out.
Cheltenham hasn’t been on my UK break radar before, but you share some good reasons to consider it!
It’s probably worth planning your trip to Cheltenham in advance so that you can be in town for a festival in one of your interests when there’s even more of a buzz in the air.
The annual horse-racing festival in the spring and the literary festival in the autumn usually grab all the headlines which isn’t that fair as there’s almost always a festival or something going on in Cheltenham. And if there isn’t it’s a beautiful town to visit.
Although I’m not a horse racing fan I always look out for the Cheltenham Festival as it’s one of those signs that spring has arrived or is on its way! It signals the start of better times.
Equally, the Literary Festival lets us know that autumn is fading and that it’s time to accept that winter’s on its way and that it’s time to settle in with some good books.
After calling Cheltenham my home for nearly 2 decades I’m sure that there are more than 8 reasons to visit Cheltenham. I love it and will never move. Even though it’s my home I still get a buzz of excitement as there are so many things happening. It may be coincidence but we now get far more visitors than when we were living in sleepy Suffolk.
I’m very jealous. It’s such a wonderful town with so much grand architecture and so many peaceful parks.
Is also worth calling into Holst’s House which is now set up as a Victorian House giving an impression of life back then.
Unfortunately I only had 2 days to whizz around the Cheltenham sights and I was very aware that there was a lot that I was missing out on. Local people had plenty of good things to say about Holst’s birthplace and I knew that it was a highlight that I should have squeezed in if I had had a couple of hours to spare. It will definitely be in pole position on my itinerary the next time that I visit Cheltenham. In fact, I felt quite a fraud using the headline of 8 highlights when I knew that there was so many more highlights to include.
It’s an odd connection but often when I hear about Cheltenham my mind goes back to the 1970s and Peter York’s book “Guide to the Sloane Ranger”. I always think of his comment that something like the 16.27 on. Friday to Cheltenham was one of the Sloane Rangers’ favourite trains.
It was hilarious to think of a whole class of people sneaking out of their London offices on a Friday afternoon to get back to their beloved Cheltenham for a weekend of dinners, country walks and a spot of shooting. Which come to think of it would make for a very pleasant weekend.
I’m sorry to say that I’ve never heard of the book though it makes perfect sense to me that people would want to escape from London to get home for a longer weekend in Cheltenham.
If I worked in London and had the opportunity for a weekend in Cheltenham then I’d be on that train too.
Of course that’s the beauty of WFH, especially for the TWATs, the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday folk who only spend mid-week in the office.