Gym's Ramblings

Cotswolds - Day 4

June 27, 2016

"Ignorance is the curse of God. Knowledge is the wing whereupon we fly to heaven."

- William Shakespeare

No worries, my dear wife and I are no longer ignorant of Stratford-upon-Avon. The birthplace and the burial place of Mr. Shakespeare are both situated in Stratford and we visited both venues this morning. We got a ride into town at about 10am and were delivered to the Hertz depot which is next to the train station. We filled out all the paperwork and became the proud temporary owners of a fine Ford Focus that has a ding on the driver's side, rear-bumper and a tendency to lose power at red-lights. But, it gets us from A to B. The real bonus though was that we left the ride in the Hertz parking lot while we checked out Shakespeare's crib and we didn't have to pay for parking.

So it turns out that William was gifted. His father and mother had lost three children before he came along and it is lucky that he survived because he helped the family out later on when there were financial troubles. Did you know that William Shakespeare's father was a glover? Do you know what a glover is? Well, a glover makes gloves. And the senior Mr. Shakespeare did all the leather work right there in the family home. So, you know what they do to soften leather? Well, they soak it in urine for a long time. And where were those urine pits? Well, they were in William's backyard. So, how do you get your son thinking about doing something great? You raise him playing with his dinky toys around the urine pits, that's how. That will drive anyone onto the stage. But William was special, he was a rather good student and subsequently, we got a lot of good material out of him.

Today, William Shakespeare's house is a museum and it is said that he was born right there in an upstairs bedroom (however after close examination, the bed that is in that room, appears to be newish). It costs about 17 quid to enter the exhibit and the ticket will also get you into Ann Hathaway's house (Will's wife), as well as the his mother's farm which is outside of town. I thought that was pretty good value but we did not have time to see the homes of the women in William's life, so we just did the birthplace in the childhood home as well as his gravesite.

William had done so well that he and his whole family are buried in a family tomb in the front of Holy Trinity Church alter, in Stratford. He was wealthy before he was 45 years of age and although he worked in London, he came back to Stratford often. In fact, the guy was baptized, most likely married, and buried at Holy Trinity Church. In other words, he did not loiter in London. In all, it is an easy half-day to see the birth and burial sites and the only other thing that you should do while you are there is see a play. A Midsummer Night's Dream was playing while we were there but as usual, we didn't have enough time to schedule it.

So why didn't we make time for a Shakespeare play? This turns out to be an easy question to answer. The food and service back home in the Buckland Manor was too good. Shoot, if I were judging for Michelin, I might give them a star. Perhaps it is coming because a sister hotel in Bath does have one.

Notwithstanding the slick ride we picked up today, we walked 4.1 miles as we strolled around Stratford and then we finally got to the Broadway Tower to see the sites from that pretty cool place. It is interesting to scale the tower constructed in 1800 and to see the surrounding countryside. It was especially cool to see all the places that we had hiked to and from since we got to the Cotswolds, from a great vantage point on one of the northernmost parts of the uplifted cuestas, in the AONB.

There is a memorial not to far from the tower where an RAF bomber crashed during a training flight in WWII. It is within a couple of hundred meters of the tower. Standing there on the tower, it is totally understandable how a rookie crew could have flown out of the mostly flat, British countryside and into the side of the summit when there was no modern navigational equipment on board. Sadly, that particular plane was so close to clearing the top of the hill!

After the tower, Mrs. Gym and I cruised around Broadway in our shiny, new Focus. Everyone was checking us out.