A tiny Gloucestershire village with fewer than 700 residents has an unlikely group to thank for part of its tourist boom: fans of a Japanese schoolgirl comic. Bibury, long famous for its honey-stone weavers' cottages, now draws a steady stream of Japanese visitors making a kind of pop-culture pilgrimage.

The draw is Kin-iro Mosaic ("Golden Mosaic"), a manga by Yui Hara that ran from 2010 to 2020 in the Japanese magazine Manga Time Kirara Max. It follows a group of Japanese schoolgirls and their British exchange student friend, and Bibury features prominently in flashback episodes where the heroine, Shinobu Omiya, visits England on a homestay. The story got a 12-episode anime adaptation in 2013, a second season in 2015, and films in 2016 and 2021 — each keeping the village on screen and on fans' bucket lists.

The real-life scenery maps neatly onto the animation: Arlington Row's 17th-century cottages, the stone bridge over the River Coln, Bibury Trout Farm and even an ice cream stall all make appearances behind the characters. For anime fans, walking the same lanes as Shinobu and her friends is the whole point of the trip.

The numbers are striking for a place this small. Bibury can see up to 20,000 visitors in a single weekend, and the parish council has flagged concerns about the environmental toll — most recently about tourists paddling in the shallow River Coln, some even setting up chairs in the water, which locals worry disturbs the swans and ducks that live there.

Bibury's fame among Japanese visitors isn't entirely new, though. William Morris called it the most beautiful village in England back in the 19th century, and Emperor Hirohito, after a stay in 1921, described it as a "sacred place" — a seal of approval that helped cement its reputation in Japan long before anime arrived.

For travellers, this is both a warning and a tip. If you want Arlington Row without the crowds, go early in the morning or on a weekday outside the summer peak, and leave the car behind where you can — the village lanes and limited parking buckle under peak demand. Combine Bibury with quieter nearby spots like Barnsley or the ampney villages to get the same Cotswold stone without the queue for the ice cream stall.

And if you're paddling anywhere in the Cotswolds this summer: the rivers are home to wildlife that locals are actively trying to protect, so keep to the banks and enjoy the view instead.

The Independent Travel