And now I've remembered I meant to buy some Stinking Bishop (it's made in Gloucestershire) in Cambridge and I forgot, dammit. Maybe I'll find some in York.
This worked out quite well; I saw some of the region called the Cotswolds, which is very pretty indeed. Sadly, since I was driving, I couldn't take any pictures - and these aren't exactly roads you can stop on in order to take any either. I also went through a place called Stow-on-the-Wold; I couldn't help but think of Dunny-on-the-Wold.
Anyway, I got to Stratford and (of course) set out to get myself on a walking tour. Which I did, albeit after struggling a bit to navigate, since there aren't as many useful maps posted around town as there are in all the other places I'd been so far - and mobile data reception is awful as well, meaning I couldn't use my phone either. But I got there just after one had started and joined it.
This tour guide probably wasn't quite as eccentric or acerbic as the others, but she was extremely well-informed, and when each of us learned the other was a keen amateur actor, we got on like a house on fire, and spent quite a lot of the time between spots talking about the productions of Shakespeare plays we'd done.
We went to all three of the 'houses' of the town - where Shakespeare's Birthplace (that one's obvious), Nash's House & New Place (where one his granddaughter and her husband lived, and the garden where Shakespeare's house had been, which is also where he died) and Hall's Croft and where his daughter and her husband lived.
I'll talk more about these in the next post, because that's when I actually go inside; this is just the outside.
We also went to Holy Trinity, which is the church where Shakespeare was baptised and where he was buried - underneath the church itself, not in the graveyard outside it. Incidentally, that's something I'm still kind of weirded out by here - I gather there are probably some in Australia that have that, but I can't recall seeing any off the top of my head.
Anyway, I took a few pictures as I wandered. Oh, the Yorkie wasn't from Stratford; I got it somewhere between Monmouth and there at a petrol station. I saw it and felt that I should try something we don't get in Australia. It was okay - I can't really say if it's like anything we do have here; I didn't pay that much attention.
Dog pic! These are Afghan Hounds. I don't know if I've ever seen one in real life before. Beautiful creatures, but I'm told they're as dumb as a stump, though I don't exactly know what metric that's based on. I've also heard them referred to as the supermodels of the dog world, which is probably unfair to both Afghans and supermodels.
Oh, this brown building in the next two is Shakespeare's school. Where he went, I mean; it's not named for him. It's still an actual school.
His actual grave.
Dotted about the place are lampposts donated from cities around the world. This one's from somewhere in Spain, and is very grand.
Another lamppost; this one's from Israel. On the right is Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof; on the left is Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream. There's an owl on the top, but I can't remember if that had any particular significance beyond owl's being cool.
Okay, next up I decided I'd go for a boat ride on the Avon river. This takes about 40 minutes, and was both relaxing and interesting - the Avon has a lock system (I didn't see it in use directly though) and there are boats that travel up and down the river from quite a fair way away. You can boat around quite a lot of the UK according to this map. People appear to use them a bit like caravans; I saw a few with bikes atop them - seems like a good idea to go somewhere by boat and then have the bike to get around on land. Probably not an option for the claustrophobic, though.
What's also along the river are some very nice houses, most of which have their own moorings or little jetties right on the river. Anyway, some pictures.
Oh, and the Avon is packed full of swans, geese (white and multicoloured - wild?) and ducks. And there are fish, too - as we powered along in our boat we saw a guy haul a huge one out of the water. I don't know what it was; I want to say trout but it seemed much larger than I'd expect wild trout to be, so perhaps it was a carp.
And that was pretty much that - though I did have a bit of a struggle finding food that night; it was Sunday and I was in England, so I wanted a traditional English Sunday meal: roast meat of some kind. I'd walked past a place that advertised this on my way to where the boat rides were, so I went back there only to find they'd run out. This, incidentally, is something that's happened to me more than a few times at pubs/restaurants here. I don't know who's in charge of ordering things in these kitchens, but they aren't very good at it. Anyway, after going to a lot of places that didn't do roasts, I managed to track one down; since they also had good beer (although, of course, the first variety I asked for they'd run out of!) I was relatively contented.
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