{"id":328477,"date":"2025-08-08T17:56:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T17:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/328477\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T17:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T17:56:11","slug":"what-could-the-cotswolds-possibly-offer-jd-vance-i-suggest-a-swim-in-one-of-its-rivers-marina-hyde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/328477\/","title":{"rendered":"What could the Cotswolds possibly offer JD Vance? I suggest a swim in one of its rivers | Marina Hyde"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t have access to the employment contract, but find myself increasingly intrigued by a question: how many days annual leave does a vice-president of the United States get? In the past five months alone, JD Vance has been on a skiing holiday, then a family trip to Disneyland, then a kayaking jaunt in Ohio \u2013 and now, he\u2019s about to pitch up for an extended summer stay in the Cotswolds<\/a>. More on all those in a bit. But let\u2019s face it: if Vance were a politician in this country, he\u2019d have been fitted with an unflattering holiday-related nickname months ago, and no one would take him remotely seriously.<\/p>\n

Still, time for another well-earned rest for Vacay Vance\/the right honourable member for the Sun Lounger. And something of a break in tradition with recent times, in which he has preferred to holiday in national parks where the Trump administration has cut half the jobs, perhaps reasoning that if his security can successfully upend the infrastructure to assist his recreation during his stay, then those jobs were never really essential anyway. Only last weekend, the VP and family were holidaying near Caesar Creek Lake in Ohio, where his Secret Service team had the army corps of engineers change the outflow of a lake<\/a>. Depending on who you believe, this was either to \u201csupport safe navigation\u201d of his huge, heavy-boated security detail, or to create \u201cideal kayaking conditions\u201d for Vance, who was certainly pictured in a canoe over the period. Listen, sometimes JD just wants a lazy river, other times he wants rushing rapids. It\u2019s called public service: look it up.<\/p>\n

Anyway, he\u2019s just about to kick off a holiday in some random country that hasn\u2019t fought a war in 30 or 40 years \u2013 namely, Britain. Thanks for being in us, sir! As a point of order, though, over here we wouldn\u2019t dream of allowing a politician to reroute one of our rivers. Instead, we allow the water companies to reroute sewage into them. Feel free to take a kayak out as often as possible during your stay. In fact, we insist on it.<\/p>\n

As for why Vance has picked the Cotswolds, it\u2019s possibly a smart move to holiday somewhere filled with so many of the absolute worst people in the country. In the modern-era Cotswolds, JD is unlikely to even be the ghastliest person in the village. And he has, unfortunately, been the target of heckling and protest on recent trips. March found him skiing en famille at Sugarbush ski resort in Vermont, forced to run a gauntlet of placard-wielding objectors before reportedly opting to move location. Again: should have gone to Courchevel, where he wouldn\u2019t even make the top 100 of the Most Hideous People on the Chairlift at Any Given Moment poll.<\/p>\n

Residents in Waitsfield, Vermont, protest against JD Vance during the vice-president\u2019s skiing holiday in March 2025. Photograph: Jeff Knight\/AP<\/p>\n

Then last month it was Disneyland, against the backdrop of widespread Ice raids on undocumented immigrants across California, where his presence drew a sarcastic welcome from its governor, Gavin Newsom. \u201cHope you enjoy your family time, @JDVance,\u201d this ran. \u201cThe families you\u2019re tearing apart certainly won\u2019t.\u201d Vance responded by posting: \u201cHad a great time, thanks.\u201d A review not wholly borne out from fellow park users\u2019 video footage, which showed the boos and protests continuing even as he trotted towards the Autopia ride and lunched furtively at the Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant.<\/p>\n

But look, the Vance family\u2019s Cotswolds accommodation promises to be far more agreeable, and is not even made of fibreglass. In fact, according to the Daily Mail, it\u2019s an 18th-century manor house in six sprawling acres of grounds that include a tennis court. Whether they also contain a swimming pool is unclear \u2013 as is whether Vance swims in a T-shirt when he\u2019s alone with his family, like he famously does at hotels. Either way, the property has reportedly been crawling with Secret Service agents all week. Amenity-wise, it\u2019s supposedly extremely close to Jeremy Clarkson\u2019s Diddly Squat empire, setting up a potentially compelling episode for the next season of Clarkson\u2019s Farm, should Vance care to call in on a temporary neighbour who recently described him<\/a> as a \u201cbearded God-botherer\u201d and \u201ctwat\u201d with \u201cno clue about history\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Vances won\u2019t be tied to that one property, we learn, with a visit to hang out with David Lammy and his family at the foreign secretary\u2019s country residence, Chevening, also planned for this coming weekend. Lammy has made so much of the two men\u2019s shared Christian bond that you\u2019d imagine he might squire the whole gang along to church on Sunday morning. Parts of the local St Botolph\u2019s church date back to the 11th century \u2013 not quite as old as the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Anaheim, to be sure, but certainly able to hold its own with the Autopia ride. Also on the agenda, finally, is a trip to London, which Vance recently described as \u201cnot English any more\u201d. Well, nor is the US, but that doesn\u2019t seem to put him off.<\/p>\n

For the lucky British people, meanwhile, the Vance holiday serves as a mere amuse bouche to the main meal \u2013 the unprecedented second state visit next month of Donald Trump, who will make landfall on 17 September for a run of dates that conveniently occurs during parliamentary recess<\/a>, thus avoiding the controversial spectacle of the president addressing the house. But if Trump\u2019s last state visit<\/a> was anything to go by, it\u2019ll be three days of remorseless rolling news wank about the \u201cpageantry\u201d, intense grandstanding by embarrassing politicians keen to suck up to him\/define themselves against him, and 958 talking heads droning cluelessly on about how both sides have \u201cgot what they want out of it\u201d. We\u2019ll be positively begging to go back to these low-key days of the Vance vacance, so let\u2019s enjoy them while we can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t have access to the employment contract, but find myself increasingly intrigued by a question: how many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-328477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114994438770107466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}