Advertisement
Published: September 2nd 2011
Edit Blog Post
Shakespeare's Birthplace
Looking a little run down... In continuing with the theme of exploring the highlights of England, Kristin, Jodie, Jonny and I headed out to Stratford-upon-Avon. We arrived on the Friday evening and before we even headed to our hostel, it was straight to the pub! We made a good choice. If you can picture a stereotypical quaint English country pub in a building where the wooden beams are drooping with age, then that is what we found. We had a quick couple of pints before we retired for the evening like the rest of the sleepy town.
In the morning, we followed the taxi driver’s suggestion for breakfast and were well rewarded with a fantastic English breakfast before we braved the hordes of tourists. The first stop was, appropriately, Shakespeare’s birthplace. The house is still in good condition and has been recreated to look like it would have done in his day. We wandered around for about an hour before heading to Hall’s Croft, a recreation of a Jacobean doctor’s house complete with his tools of the time, Nash’s House, the site of a house where Shakespeare died, and a local church where Shakespeare is buried.
Next up was the highlight for me –
Garden
Near a house Shakespeare used to own Mary Arden’s Farm, which had a bit of an open day with BBQ’s, stalls, dancing, archery and other fighting scenes. We wandered around visiting the farm animals, naming after each other as you do, and I even tried my hand at weaving. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be giving up my day job for that. The last stop of the Shakespeare’s Houses tour was Anne Hathaway’s Cottage (not that Anne Hathaway unfortunately) – billed as the ‘romantic’ of the Shakespearean houses. I don’t know if it was the fact the house was on a slope, but I’m pretty sure I saw the girls swooning….. After this whirlwind tour, we were back on the train to London.
The following weekend was the second half of my 30th birthday present for Clay – a ‘Learn to be a spy day’! Despite us both sporting hangovers, it was a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed the sniper training – of which I was a natural – the target on my wall with 10/10 bullet holes attests to this! We also did pistol drawing, automatic weapon firing, surveillance training and hand-to-hand combat. In the evening, we met up with Debbie and Courtney for
the perfect hangover cure – a BBQ in scorching sunshine, before we fare welled Beth and Andy as they moved back to NZ via Africa.
Next up on our England weekend road trip tour was Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle. Clay, Hannah, Kristin and I left on the Friday evening and made it up to Stoke relatively early via a pub dinner, though not early enough for the spa/sauna to be open. I was up far too early on the Saturday as I perched myself in the bar in front of the TV to watch the All Blacks vs. Australia while the others slept on/went and relaxed in the sauna. I was happy with my choice as the All Blacks thoroughly beat the Aussies again!
Our first stop for the day was a local monkey park, which was good fun. Somehow we managed to drag out Kristin and Hannah before they took one home as a pet. Our next stop was Wedgwood Pottery, which apparently (according to Hannah – I had never heard of it before. Pottery knowledge is not my strong point) is very famous. We pottered (sorry) around there for a little while before continuing up to Newcastle
A little too much mead?
A local out at the farm after a heavy night via a couple of photos with the Angel of the North.
One of the main reasons for visiting Newcastle was that it is supposed to be one of the best nights out in the UK, and it certainly was an eye opening experience. We started off with a curry before moving onto a few pubs, where we were given a taste of the night to come. The best way I can describe it is that the majority of women seem to have a competition to wear as little as possible while remaining decent (occasionally failing). You might say this isn’t unusual for night clubs, but this is a year round thing, so regardless of whether there is snow falling (not hugely uncommon considering how close Newcastle is to Scotland) or it is a summer’s evening, the dress code is minimalist. I have heard of women being mocked because they brought a sweater out in the snow. Madness.
The next morning, we made our way gingerly to the hotel’s breakfast – thankfully a nice greasy English breakfast before we went out and wandered around Newcastle and along the River Tyne. It had some nice enough buildings and the raising
My Weaving
Though I didn't do all of it bridge was pretty cool but otherwise there wasn’t anything else to keep us there for too long so we headed down to Durham to check out the Cathedral. It is one of the few remaining in England in the Norman style of architecture and was very impressive. After here, we had some lunch and made the trek back to London for another week of recovery at work.
But the excitement didn’t stop there as rioting broke out in London! It still seems quite unbelievable reading about it as I never saw any of it except of TV as it was mainly in the outlying areas, though I did have friends who lived in the middle of it in Clapham. There was quite a bit of trouble down near my old flat in Brixton though – not a huge surprise when you are offered drugs everyday walking to work! Over the next couple of weeks, things quietened down a bit as went up to Leeds for my first game of the season, helped celebrate his birthday with plenty of drinks including several Tabasco sauce-laced shots, and went to the Oval to watch England hammer India in the cricket.
Throughout
Kristin
As the horses head all this I was counting down to the last bank holiday weekend of the year. We continued the celebrations of Clay’s descent to senility with a 3 day trip to Alicante. We have booked out a villa right on the beach and with temperatures forecasted in the mid to late 30’s, I can’t wait to get there and swim in the sea again!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 15; qc: 34; dbt: 0.068s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kristin Wilson
non-member comment
Of all the photos you took you had to choose the worst ones to post on here?