Each weekend, the stream of visitors to the shop at Diddly Squat, Jeremy Clarkson's farm near Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds seems endless.

Likewise, it's usually standing room only at his pub, The Farmer's Dog, 12 miles away near Brize Norton.

Further west in picturesque Bibury, the rows between residents and drivers illegally parking their coaches or cars frequently descend into abuse, and all too often, sometimes violence.

It's a similar story in Bourton-on-the-Water, dubbed the 'Venice of the Cotswolds' for its many bridges, where one local described peak season as 'living under siege'.

Yet the celebrities from both sides of the Pond – along with hordes of the Great British Public - keep flocking to this stunning area dubbed 'Britain's Beverly Hills' roughly bordered by the M40, M4 and M5.

Beyonce and Jay-Z are the just latest stars setting up home in the Cotswolds, buying up 58 acres of land at Wigginton, near Great Tew.

Estate agents report their busiest summer yet for sales to the rich and famous, but locals complain they are being priced out of the market.

Beyonce will join fellow Americans Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi in putting down roots in the Cotswolds, along with myriad British celebrities including the Beckhams, the Camerons, Clarkson himself and Kate Moss.

Then there are the visitors who come every spring and summer, and most weekends. 

This year, they included US Vice-President JD Vance, whose 18-strong convoy of police and Secret Service vehicles had residents of Dean, near Chipping Norton standing aghast last month.

The massive influx has led some to ask: Is it time for the Cotswolds to be declared 'full up'?

And against this frenetic backdrop, a US theme park giant called Great Wolf Lodge has been given permission to build a huge waterpark and hotel complex near Bicester, just outside the designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, despite opposition from no fewer than 30 parish councils in the area.

The £200m investment, similar to a Center Parcs resort is the first such waterpark built by the company outside North America and they say it will create 1,000 jobs during the construction phase and 600 jobs when in operation.

Then there's a separate plan for a French-funded historical theme park nearby, which has sparked both pro- and anti-campaigns.

Both parks would bring hundreds of thousands more vehicles and visitors to the area each year, thereby threatening the idyllic peace and quiet which draws people in the first place.

Caroline Chipperfield-Twiddy, 49, led the unsuccessful campaign to halt the Great Wolf Lodge waterpark in Chesterton, near Bicester, as chair of the 'Stop the Wolf' group.

'All of the surrounding villages stood up and said this was inappropriate.' She told the Mail.

'The biggest challenge with Wolf was that it didn't offer anything to locals - they don't sell day tickets, you have to stay there and it's quite expensive.

'One of the most offensive features was a brightly coloured six-storey tall water tower. They had very little consultation with the village.

'The traffic was a great concern, and they made a very half-hearted offer of a shuttle bus from the station.

'They told us it would be 500 family rooms at the complex, but American family rooms sleep eight, so that's immediately more than one car per room. 

'It's just an enormous eyesore on the edge of the village.'

Although the campaigners lost their battle, with permission being granted in 2021 after a public inquiry, they still hope they could win the war, because GWL has still not been built, four years on, with only water infrastructure having taken place.

Officially, the company say the project is 'paused', but IT consultant Mrs Chipperfield-Twiddy and other villagers suspect the plan will be scrapped and the land sold for housing instead.

'We don't really know where we are,' she said. 'They are not being transparent with us.

'They have had tremendous problems getting the required supply of water to the site, so we're hoping that they will eventually scrap their plans in Chesterton and sell it off for housing instead, which is absolutely fine as far as I'm concerned.'

Chesterton Parish Council chair Andrew Thomas said: 'We're not averse to development. As a country we need to grow.

'We need housing and facilities, but often there's too little thought about the impact a development will have on a local area.

'This is a small village which already has issues with low water pressure and a sewage problem too, so a huge water park is the wrong thing to place here.'

Plans for the Puy du Fou historical theme park further up the M40 at Bucknell, near Bicester, have unusually sparked petitions from locals both against and in favour of the development.

The award-winning company already has sites in France and Spain. The park in Oxfordshire would be open between April and October and would have four period villages and 13 live shows.

The park could be built by 2029, and Puy du Fou says it would deliver 2,000 direct jobs and 6,000 indirect jobs when operational, bringing a £600millon boost to the local economy over ten years.

If planning permission (recently sought) was granted, visitors will watch blood-drenched re-enactments of scenes from the Roman, Mediaeval and Viking times, where warriors are beheaded, women are thrown around like rag dolls and beaten to a pulp, and actors and animals are set on fire.

In one of 20 jaw-dropping shows, called Le Signe Du Triomphe and set in 3AD, in a full sized ancient Roman circus maximus stadium seating thousands of spectators, we photographed Centurion Damien, the hero of this particular show, slashing his Gallic opponent's neck with a 25-inch iron sword sending an arc of blood spurting into the air.

Moments later, a kneeling Roman soldier is decapitated by Gallic rebels sending more blood spurting. 

In return, a female Gallic rebel's head is split open with a giant hammer sending blood showering down for metres around.

While a petition has been set up by local people backing the development, there's also a campaign against it, called No to Puy du Fou.

They say: 'We oppose the plans for bringing millions of annual visitors to the area where the infrastructure just won't cope, despite the wild claims made by the developer to the contrary, and to protect the rural landscape and ancient villages that would be drastically impacted by its presence.'

Another campaign called 'We want Puy du Fou UK' called on the council to vote in favour of the plans, backed by more than 200 signatures.

It stated: 'We would like Cherwell District Council to vote in favour of the award-winning Puy du Fou building a new UK park in Oxfordshire, retelling British history through incredible shows.'

A spokesperson for Puy du Fou said: 'Whenever significant development is proposed, local residents will quite properly have concerns and questions.

'That is why we have been engaged in such a comprehensive programme of consultation over the last year with six separate exhibition days and over 250 individual meetings with local, regional and national groups.

'Transport is always the number one issue for locals. And we have submitted a full Transport Assessment with our application which covers this issue in great detail.'

But with or without huge new theme parks, the cars and coaches full of tourists will still keep coming to the Cotswolds, and nothing will stop them, it seems.

When Clarkson's Farm at Diddly Squat applied to build an overflow car park to ease congestion two years ago, the local Parish Council in Chadlington expressed disquiet with their popular neighbour.

Council chairman Andrew Hutchings said that a lot of people in the village agreed that Diddly Squat had 'clearly outgrown what it was built for'.

He said: 'We have reached a tipping point between a farm shop and a tourist-type attraction for people who want to see the celebrity as well as the farm.

'The problem comes when you have too many visitors... The traffic is a major issue to the community at large. It's very hard to see the proposed car park dealing with that at peak times.'

'When you have a site which has significant traffic problems and cannot deal with the number of visitors, should we be adding more services and features that enable more people to spend longer on the premises?'

But the overflow car park was eventually built.

Further west in the tiny village Bourton-on-the-Water, parish and Cotswold District councillor Jon Wareing is heartily fed up of the hordes of TikTok influencers blocking the various scenic bridges across the river Windrush as they take their selfies.

'We're getting two-and-a-half times the village population every day during the peak season,' he told the Mail. 

'It's like having a music festival everyday, with just the crowds, but no music. We're living under siege!'

He said the invasion of tourists 'Degrades the social fabric for the people who live here and the benefits are fairly negligible, I would say.'

He said about three weeks ago a young mother was struggling to push her child in a buggy across one of the bridges and when she asked someone to move, she was 'threatened with being stabbed.'

The vehicles, especially coaches which are too big for the infrastructure to handle, bring frequent gridlocks and rising tempers.

Mr Wareing would like to set up parking areas outside the village, a half hour walk away, to ease congestion, but for now the visitors use car parks in the centre of the village.

'It's a small little village and it's real and it's treated like a theme park. Real people live here.

'When you get to this state of over-tourism and and people just using us to harvest their social media content. I would say that there are no advantages whatsoever.

'What we need to move towards is some form of sustainable tourism. I'm not going to claim I have the answers, but we're hoping to be able to fund a project to establish the hard facts about the costs and benefits of tourism first, and move on from there.'

Bibury, once described by Victorian artist William Morris as 'the most beautiful village in England' has long been a popular destination for tourists. 

It also has probably the most photographed street in England in the shape of Arlington Row, a terrace of Cotswold stone cottages.

Last week, Forbes magazine voted Bibury top of the 50 most beautiful villages in the world. 

Whereas that would normally be a cause for celebration, it was met with a 'collective groan' by residents, according to one.

Villagers claim that photo hunters peer through their windows and even stroll into their homes as if they are visiting a museum.

Mark Honeyball, 54, chairman of Bibury Parking Working Group, said the main problems in the village are coaches and the 'sheer volume' of tourists.

He has seen countless examples of coaches blocking roads and pavements as they park, and in recent months barriers have been erected to prevent larger vehicles crossing one bridge.

He says he's also been assaulted four times for politely asking drivers to move along or park legally.

He said: 'We've gone from 10 to 90 coaches a day. We have seen a quadrupling of tourists coming into the village.

'The coaches are causing damage to the village, they are knocking over walls.

'Recently a coach driver screamed at, and threatened a young woman traffic warden, reducing her to tears. I've been assaulted four times and I'm not the only one.

'The coach issues by the bridge are better managed with the barriers, though these are unsightly.

'However, the issue with the coaches has simply been moved to other areas of the village where they still park unsafely and illegally.

'Some responsible coach companies are moving to minibuses and mini coaches but this simply increases volume of traffic.

'Cars come in greater and greater numbers, especially since Forbes gave us the accolade.

'We're putting permanent restrictions in the centre and pedestrianising parts. Parking on the river will be paid for. 

'We're also considering other methods to manage volume of vehicles. It will only get worse.'

Great Wolf Lodge and Diddly Squat Farm were contacted for comment.