The curious case of Britain’s latest tourist hotspot

What caused a group of tourists to descend on a sleepy Oxford village? Michael Simkins investigates

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter. Was the character the reason for tourists descending on a sleepy Oxford village?

If you’re thinking of visiting the United Kingdom this summer, be sure to plan your trip carefully, because there’s so much to see: Big Ben, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, not to mention York Minster, the Georgian splendour of Bath and, erm, the delights of the village of Kidlington.

Never heard of Kidlington? Believe it or not, this small village, five miles north of Oxford, has become the latest must-see destination for travellers from the Far East.

If you are not prepared to take my word for it, just ask the locals, who’ve seen their village overrun with sightseers in recent weeks. Nobody knows why they’re there, not even the sightseers.

Don’t get me wrong, Kidlington has much to offer to the intrepid traveller, if you like sampling housing estates, convenience stores and parked cars. Nonetheless, coach loads of Chinese trippers have been wandering the streets, cameras in hand, snapping away at anything that moves.

Theories abound as to what they’re doing there. Some claim the bewildered visitors are under the impression they’re visiting the fictional birthplace of Harry Potter.

Another theory suggests they may have mixed Kidlington up with the nearby village of Kirtlington, which does indeed have pretensions to be the prettiest village in England.

Yet others point out that it’s a handy stopover on the way to nearby Bicester Village, a retail development famous for selling designer labels at knock-down prices.

Whatever the reason, the tourists have been making themselves at home there.

Residents have discovered strangers helping themselves to blooms from front gardens, asking to use their bathrooms and even commandeering people’s front lawns as impromptu picnic spots. One villager, 66-year-old Nick Allington, even had a request from an individual asking if he might be allowed to cut his lawn.

So why, you might ask, doesn’t somebody ask them what they’re doing here?

Well, they did. Trouble was, few of the tourists speak any English and with the residents of Kidlington not much better at Mandarin, it ended up as something of an impasse. Needless to say, both parties are none the wiser.

Perhaps the real reason for this very modern mystery is one of good old greed and duplicity. Kidlington lies on the edge of the Cotswolds, an area of middle England famed for its rolling hills, chocolate box villages and pearling streams.

It’s rumoured that some unscrupulous travel operator may have decided to save on time and money that would otherwise be spent on taking its clients to the heart of the Cotswolds and have, instead, been dumping them in Kidlington with assurances that it’s the real thing.

The economic advantages are obvious to the tour operators. Let the tourists wander about, point them in the direction of nearby landmarks (the local war memorial and the automated car wash), chivvy them back onto the coach, and whisk them on to the next beauty spot a few miles away.

An old proverb says that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance” and tourists the world over have always been among the most gullible of species.

Indeed, the story runs of a party of day-trippers being shown round HMS Victory in Portsmouth, the ship Admiral Lord Nelson was commanding in 1805 when he met his death at the hand of a sniper’s bullet, and still one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country.

“And this silver plate in the deck marks the spot where Nelson fell” explains the guide.

“I’m not surprised,” commented one of the tourists, “I nearly slipped on it myself ...”

Michael Simkins is an actor and writer in London

On Twitter: @michael_simkins