How to spend a day in Malmesbury, Wiltshire

For my first trip away from home since March 2020, I headed to a small market town in Wiltshire to watch one of my friends finally get married after several Covid cancellations.

It was a scorching weekend. The skies were bright blue, there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, and all of the green spaces looked vibrant; it was gorgeous weather for my welcome back to travelling.

It took me 3.5 hours of travelling on trains, buses and the Tube, but I made it. The little town of Malmesbury was small and a tad isolated from easy public transport links (I’m not used to country life), but it was absolutely worth the trek. The town is mostly small, independent coffee shops and restaurants and a few essential chain shops, but the star of the show is Malmesbury Abbey.

As well as the gorgeous building itself, there’s an old 18th and 19th Century graveyard that people were always exploring and using to soak up the sun and the shade. Then there absolutely stunning Abbey House and Gardens where the wedding was held.

What a place to get married!

I was in Malmesbury from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, so my options were actually fairly limited in what I was able to do. Most shops and the Abbey were closed by the time I arrived at around 4pm on Saturday and lots of places were closed on Sunday and Monday, but the restaurants and coffee shops were open what I would consider to be normal hours. (Really not used to countryside/small town hours!)

Where to eat

I did a brave thing on my first night in Malmesbury. I ate in a proper sit-down restaurant on my own for the very first time.

I had a mushroom risotto and a raspberry refresher mocktail at ‘La Campagna’ and it was gorgeous! There was a lovely atmosphere, aside from the middle-aged couple on the next table to kept looking at me and whispering, and the staff were really attentive and not at all judgey. The food was really delicious, even though it was far too hot to be eating a big hot meal in a restaurant without aircon, and I kept myself company by reading while I ate. While I was on a road trip with Simon, Baz and Penelope in Rainbow Rowell’s ‘Wayward Son’, I didn’t think about the fact that I was on my own in a restaurant even once.

Where to stay

There aren’t actually a huge number of options of where to stay in Malmesbury, especially at the moment when it seems like the whole country is booked up, and so I grabbed a room at The Old Bell Hotel which is just next to the Abbey.

While the hotel is beautiful and in the perfect spot, I was a little underwhelmed for the cost of it.

It cost me £251 for two nights, and when I arrived it was a single room… Breakfast was included, it was beautifully decorated and the shower was next level, but there’s no way it was worth that kind of money. It’s the oldest purpose built hotel in England, established in 1220, and there’s a really nice restaurant and lounge. As cool as that is, when I checked in none of three staff members at reception at the time gave me any info about breakfast or any of the facilities or restrictions which I found strange.

If I were in a different room, I don’t think I’d have any issues, but as it stands, I wasn’t hugely impressed.

Malmesbury is a beautiful little market town not too far from the Cotswolds and in easy reach of Bath, Bristol and Swindon and it’s absolutely worth a day trip out to explore the Abbey and gardens and grab a spot of lunch.

Written by Sophie