This policy explains what Cotswolds Tourism (cotswoldstourism.org) collects when you visit, why, and what you can do about it. It describes how the site actually works today rather than a generic set of possibilities, and it is updated when that changes.
Last updated: 21 September 2026.
The short version
You can read every guide on this site without giving anything at all. There is no account to create, no newsletter, no login and no comment section — comments are closed across the site. The only personal information the site ever receives directly is what you type into the contact form. Beyond that, Google Analytics counts which guides get read, some booking links earn a commission, and the web server keeps the ordinary technical record of your request.
Who is responsible
The site is published by the independent publisher of Cotswolds Tourism, who is the data controller for everything described here. Readers in the United Kingdom and the EEA have rights under the UK and EU GDPR, set out below. The contact form is the route for any question about your data, including a request to see it or delete it.
What the contact form collects
The form asks for your name, your email address and your message. That is delivered to my mailbox and kept there so the conversation makes sense if you write again. It is used to reply to you and for nothing else: it is not added to a mailing list, not used for marketing, and not sold or shared. Ask through the form and the correspondence will be deleted.
The legal basis is your consent, given by choosing to send the message, together with a legitimate interest in answering it.
Server logs
The web host records standard access logs for every request: IP address, the time, the page requested, the referring page and your browser’s user-agent string. These exist to keep the site running and to deal with abuse and attacks. They are not used to build a profile of you, and they are discarded on the host’s normal rotation.
Google Analytics and Search Console
The site runs Google Analytics 4, which sets cookies in your browser and reports how many people read each guide, roughly where in the world they are, and whether they arrived from a search engine or a link. IP addresses are truncated by Google before the data reaches me, and individual visitors are never identified — only counts. It is used to decide which parts of the Cotswolds to write about next. Whether Analytics runs before you have answered the cookie notice depends on where you are reading from, as the cookie section below explains, and Google’s own consent signals are set from your answer either way.
The site is also verified with Google Search Console, which reports the search queries that lead people here. Search Console works from Google’s own records and sets no cookies on this site. If you would rather not be counted at all, Google publishes a browser opt-out add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout, and most browsers can block analytics cookies outright.
Cookies, and the notice about them
Cookies on this site come from two places. Google Analytics, described above, sets its own. Aegis Consent, the plugin behind the cookie notice, sets one named cookie_consent_34064f that records your choice, alongside a companion cookie holding the country it worked you out to be in, so that the notice is not shown again on every page; if your browser refuses cookies it keeps the same record in local storage instead. The booking partner described below sets no cookie at all — Stay22 keeps its identifier in local storage — which is why a notice about cookies alone would not cover it. WordPress itself sets cookies only for a logged-in administrator, which as a reader you never are, and the caching layer uses technical cookies to serve pages quickly.
A cookie notice is shown on your first visit and explains what is used; your answer is kept in cookie_consent_34064f so you are not asked again on every page. Which of them may run before you answer differs by country; the next section sets that out. Your browser’s own cookie controls work alongside the notice, though they are not the more complete of the two any more: they cannot stop the booking partner’s script, because it does not use a cookie, and the setting on this page can. Blocking costs you nothing either way — every guide works without it.
What the notice does before you answer it depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the UK and the EEA nothing in the analytics or marketing categories runs until you accept it, so both Google Analytics and Stay22 stay switched off unless you say yes. In Switzerland analytics starts on, but marketing — the category Stay22 belongs to — still waits for your consent. In the United States, Canada and most of the rest of the world the site follows the opt-out standard those laws set instead: those categories start switched on, and the notice is how you turn them off, which takes effect from the moment you choose. Wherever you are, a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser is honoured automatically, your answer is remembered for twelve months, and you can change it at any time through the cookie notice.
When you answer the notice, the answer itself is recorded on this site — which categories you chose, the rule it was made under, the country you were in and the version of this policy in force at the time — so that a consent can be evidenced if it is ever questioned. That record is kept here rather than sent to an advertising company, and the country is worked out on this site from your IP address.
Your choices, and what runs before you make them
What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Stay22 — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.
In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice. Analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. In Canada, and in the countries where notice is enough — among them Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India and Mexico — everything described on this page starts when you arrive; the notice tells you so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever I cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.
Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_34064f that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. It lasts about a year. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: the scripts stop and what they stored on your device is cleared, including visitor_id_id22, cache_id22 and the thumbmark_* keys.
Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Cotswolds Tourism is held back from readers who say no.
If you are reading this in the United States
Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and I have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Cotswolds Tourism treats it as covered.
So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. Using it stops the advertising category, which is what Stay22 and any ad partner sit in, and clears what they have already stored on your device.
This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and I do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.
The record kept of your choice
Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.
That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.
Affiliate links and booking partners
Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. Where a guide points at somewhere to stay, that link is usually one of them. Accommodation links are handled by Stay22, a booking-link service that adds a referral tag when you click through to a hotel or booking site. If you go on to book, the booking site pays a small commission. The price you pay is the same either way, and nothing on this site is behind a paywall or conditional on using those links.
What that means for your data: when you click one of these links, the partner receives the fact that the click came from this site, along with the standard technical details any website receives, and stores an identifier in your browser so that a booking made afterwards can be attributed and the commission paid. Cotswolds Tourism never sees your booking, your travel dates, your name or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, occasionally, the fact that a booking happened.
Once you follow one of those links you are on the booking partner’s own site, under their privacy policy, and this one stops applying. If you would rather not be tracked that way, decline the marketing category in the cookie notice: in the UK and the EEA that stops it before it ever runs, and elsewhere it stops it from the moment you choose. The links still work and the price is unchanged. Blocking third-party cookies on its own will not do it, for the reason described next.
One detail is worth spelling out, because a cookie notice on its own would miss it. Stay22 runs a script that rewrites booking links and identifies your device so that a booking can be credited to me, and it does that from the characteristics of your browser and device rather than from a cookie, keeping an identifier in your browser’s local storage. On this site the script is classed as marketing, so whether it runs before you have answered the notice depends on where you are reading from, exactly as set out above. Declining that category stops it, and declining it does not limit anything you can read here.
Links to other sites
Guides link out to the National Trust, English Heritage, train and bus operators, councils and individual businesses so you can check things at source. Once you follow one of those links you are on someone else’s site under someone else’s policy, and I have no control over what they collect. That applies equally to the affiliate booking links described above and to the official sites, which earn nothing.
Who your data is shared with
Nothing is sold, rented or traded. Information is shared only with the service providers that make the site work: the web host, Google for analytics, Stay22 and the booking platforms it refers to for the affiliate links above, and the provider that delivers contact-form messages. Each processes data under its own terms and only to provide that service. Some of them operate internationally, so data may be processed outside the UK, relying on the safeguards those providers have in place.
Your rights
Under the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR you can ask for a copy of the personal data held about you, ask for it to be corrected or erased, object to how it is used, or withdraw consent you previously gave. In practice the only personal data this site holds is contact-form correspondence, so a request is straightforward to honour. Send it through the form and expect a reply within a month. If you are unhappy with the response you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.
Children
This site is written for adults planning travel and is not directed at children. Information is not knowingly collected from anyone under 16.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes materially, the updated version is published here with a new date. Questions about it go through the contact page.