What it's really like on the Cotswolds school run: Kamikaze nannies in 4x4s, giant potholes and posturing tech bro dads make drop-off pure purgatory: GEORGINA FULLER

Tailbacks so bad they can scupper an 11am meeting, scores of 'finance bro' dads posturing at the school gates and professional nannies hurtling down narrow country lanes at 65mph in their employer's Land Rover Defenders – welcome to the school run, Cotswolds-style. With its honey-coloured brickwork, verdant valleys and chocolate box cottages, this bucolic portion of England – which celebrities can't seem to get enough of right now – might look picture-perfect but, trust me, for parents trying to get their child sat at a desk before the school bell rings every day, it can be an absolute nightmare. The snaking rural lanes – complete with suspension-busting cavities – and the prevalence of SUVs can make driving around where my husband and I live in the North Cotswolds feel like whiplash waiting to happen. Flat tyres and broken wing mirrors are a regular occurrence and such treacherous drives are one of the reasons I traded in my Volkswagen Tiguan for the slightly sturdier Discovery Sport (and no, it hasn’t broken down yet) a few years ago. Doing the school run in it though makes me feel like I’m driving a rally car, especially when it comes to tackling the region's notorious blind bends.Some of the roads are so awful the area has even been renamed the 'Potswolds' by one waspish Instagram account. It highlights some of the worst potholes in West Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire and has over 3,200 followers. Warwickshire isn’t quite as bad although the roads around the south of the county are far from perfect. The Cotswolds may be one of the most beautiful regions in England... but when almost every resident has a sizeable SUV, negotiating its narrow rural roads in a rush requires serious steel (Pictured: Georgina Fuller with her Land Rover Defender) 'Potholes the size of canyons, lines of cars pulled over with flat tyres, buckled rims, ruined suspensions… and somehow this is normal now?' it laments.The roads around the prep schools and posh villages are, surprisingly, amongst the worst. The primary school at Great Tew, for example, which feels like a private school given its proximity to Soho Farmhouse and A-lister homes (including the Beckhams'), can be especially perilous around the hours of 8.30am and 3.30pm.Double parking, pavement hogging and 'state till we're eight' kids who answer to names like Geronimo and Fenella, run amok. No wonder the millennial mums, clutching yoga mats and matcha lattes at the village's upmarket Quince and Clover café, look so vexed after school drop-off, particularly if they still have toddlers, who they're 'gentle parenting', in tow.In the nearby village of Wigginton (where Beyoncé was eyeing up land and US comedian Ellen DeGeneres reportedly rented a property), a member of the public called the police earlier this year because the potholes were so bad that cars were driving on the other side of the road to avoid them.The road around the village has become a popular school rat-run – because it offers a quicker cut-through route for children attending Bloxham School. Fees start at £28,000-a-year and current pupils include the progeny of a cosmetics behemoth and a 90s Britpop star.Just around the corner, on the way to Hook Norton, near my new favourite pub, The Norman Knight, there’s a glossy new Park Lane-style garage selling supercars. It’s owned by Tom Hartley Jnr (who oversaw the private sale of Bernie Ecclestone’s F1 collection) but caution is advised when driving by – you can guarantee if a red trouser-wearing school dad is coming the other way, he'll be looking at the shiny Ferraris, not the road in front of him. Cotswolds jam: The region's pretty market towns and villages don't cope well with school traffic (Pictured: congestion in the town of Burford)A friend who lives in the pretty village of Churchill, near Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm, says she often has to down tools and pick her children up, who attend local prep school Kingham Hill, from wherever the school bus has ground to a halt with its latest punctured tyre. And, of course, there's another mid-afternoon obstacle parents face: hordes of tourists blocking the lanes around Clarkson's Farm, which causes tailbacks through nearby Chipping Norton, which is near our daughter’s school.It could be worse though. We could be parenting over the border in Gloucestershire, where the local council has banned tourist coaches completely from beauty spot Bourton-on-the-Water and is pondering doing the same in Bibury, famously once called ‘the most beautiful village in England’ by William Morris. You can add 'most Instagrammable' too in 2026. For parents taking their children to the CofE primary school in Bibury, some sunny mornings must feel like driving into the Wild West. With 50 coaches a day in summer, pity the parents who have to weave around them – and the Hunter welly-wearing influencers already posing for selfies – to get their little darlings to school there.Those of us who call the Cotswolds home thank the Lord – and the Romans – for ruler-drawn the Fosse Way, which runs through Moreton-in-Marsh and Stow-on-the Wold, even if the lanes off it, including one that leads to a particularly sought-after prep school, can be chock-a-block at school pick-up and drop-off. The school run congestion has got so bad in the Wiltshire corner of the Cotswolds that pilot schemes began earlier this week to try and ease the weekday pain for parents and commuters.Despite all of the above, I still love living in this beautiful part of England. Shelling out for the school bus might feel like an unnecessary expense with cars sitting idle on the driveway but when I think about what we must have spent over the years on flat tyres and broken wing mirror repairs, it's actually proving a bargain.