Day 11—Cheltenham, Stow on the Wold, Stratford upon Avon, Warwick, Cannock.

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We hit the road by about 10 and got to Stow by half 10. Stow is fabulous. There is a large central square, come car park area within the central shopping district. There was one parking spot with our name and camper dimensions on it ! We got it.

We walked the streets for an hour. There are probably 70 stores in the whole town, and yet 3 out 4 stores in one stretch were shoe stores. Mum, you would love it. Saw a lovely 1700’s wooden chair in one of the many antique stores. The region is famous for its food, quaint thatched buildings and cobbled streets. We bought some pies and then headed on to Stratford. The pies were great but very hot, so they took some time to eat while driving to Stratford.

We arrived at Stratford about 12.30 and headed straight to the park with the Shakespeare statue and the canal and barges. The kids were quite impressed with the loch system and more of the boats that we had seen in Gloucester. We then walked up town towards shakey’s birthplace, amongst the throng of what appeared to be Overseas University students who seemed to be studying the architecture of the town, which is typical of the area and very nice. We did the tour through his birthplace which was a no photo event, but I took some of the exterior. Very humble and quaint little building that looked like many of the other buildings that we have seen over here in that they look like they were built by drunks as nothing looks straight or true. In the upper bedroom was a chair that looked like the partner of the chair we had seen in the antique shop in Stow ! Many of the rooms contained models and dummy’s dressed up for the time. In one room, as we entered, Tanya nearly died as the model who looked to be asleep, suddenly woke up and said hello.

We had paid for 2 hours parking and got back to our car a couple of minutes late. We got in and I started looking at my maps before we headed off. A parking inspector who seemed to know that our parking was expired(along with those of the other 2 Campers who had all pulled in with us and we had all agreed we only needed 2 hours) made a beeline for us. I wound my window down and convinced him that we were leaving. He hovered around for a couple more minutes and seemed most unhappy we weren’t moving so I started the engine and he then wandered off. I stopped the engine and we got everyone sorted a bit more and then off to Warwick.

We arrived at Warwick and had a little under 2 hours to do what is quite a large tour with many artefacts. Tanya had been reading that a family pass was 38 quid and so when the lady asked her for 52 quid, she decided it wasn’t worth it, given how much the kids would complain. We walked the streets around the Castle and I got a few good photos.

Faced with an hour of so up our sleave, we pushed on towards Lichfield, and found a camper just short of Lichfield at a place called Cannock. Looking at the map though, it is probably more corectly in Hednesford, or we didn’t find the right place. We were looking for a camp site next to an old Youth Hostel, but found a very nice green campsite. We showered and then headed down the road to the Red Lion at Brereton for what I was expecting to be typical Pub food as advised by the camp site lady. Instead we got huge lashings of fancy French looking and sounding food, which we struggled to finish. Tanya has read that there is 500 Red Lion Pubs in England as James the 2nd decided he liked his red Lions so much as pets, that all the pubs should be named after them.

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