Headlines
Happy Birthday Shakespeare! (No it's not?!) The parade could be improved.
Where Do We Park? And... how do we get there?!
Out and About: on the edge of the Cotswolds... Lunch at the Howard Arms, Ilmington.. And a few geocaches.
I Subscribed to The West: but why?!
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Stream of Consciousness
Happy Birthday Shakespeare! (No it's not?!) The parade could be improved.
I think I mentioned this earlier: this is the weekend of celebrations for Shakespeare's 400th birthday. Stratford is packed. We didn't know about the birthday to a few days before we left home...
Correction: It's the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. That could explain the bell tolling (see later). And the four masked people carrying a coffin.
Anyway, today -- Saturday -- was intended to be a quiet stroll around town. Check our preferred parking spot, find the start and finish locations, wander round the famous town... Well...
We drive to town -- and half the roads are closed. Shakespeare's birthday celebration involves a street parade. We give up trying to get to our preferred parking, it's on the other side of town.
We park at the top of a multi storey carpark. It's about three quarters full. It's about 9:30am. And to skip ahead: when we return, at about noon, there are cars queuing, waiting to get into this carpark.
The carpark is next to the area for Saturday markets. They are just getting started. We walk towards the middle of town, looking for the information stand for our run. We ask a policeman. He doesn't know about the run but he can tell us where the shop is that the info is meant to be near. It's not there... Possibly not till tomorrow.
We walk to the roundabout in the middle of town. It's all a no traffic zone. There are barriers, to keep pedestrians away from the parade. And there are crowds of people. We follow High Street to the town hall... Seems to be some action here, certainly an area for the crowds to gather.
First things first... We walk towards the river and find public toilets. Must get more 20p coins! I spend a 50p to pee.
Then back to the town hall. Judging by the growing crowd, something is going to happen here. Sure enough... At 10:30, a bell starts tolling. By the time it stops -- at 11 o'clock -- I guess that it tolled 400 times. Once per year of Shakespearian birthdays. (Or deathdays.)
There are announcements, from up the road at the roundabout. Introducing people, groups and bands for the parade. We stand and wait.
After 40 minutes of waiting -- and bell tolling -- the parade passes by!
Local school kids, dignitaries, actors, students of Shakespeare... Not at all what we were expecting... We were expecting themed displays... Perhaps Romeo and Juliet holding hands, or Birnam Wood marching by... Or something... interesting!
It may have been interesting to the locals. And to diehard fans. Though even for them, a bit of passing commentary -- regular calls to applaud such and such a group -- would have helped. It would have been nice to applaud at least the school kids.
There were occasional costumes, some quite good. There were lots of ceremonial robes, interesting but not particularly Shakespearian. One man had his hair and beard -- his actual hair and beard -- looking very very much like Shakespeare. That was excellent :-)
The organisers had given away (?) ten thousand masks of Shakespeare face. An excellent idea -- but it really needed to be pushed a bit more... Perhaps: Everyone wears a mask so noone knows who they are -- yet everyone knows who he is... Or something like that! There was just an announcement: put on the masks. And: Most Shakespeare masks ever worn at one place. Nice idea, lacked pizzazz in execution.
Oh, and Robbie (when he heard about the Shakespeare celebrations) said we should wear a ruff and carry a skull. I saw a total of one ruff and no skulls at all. See what I mean about lack of pizzazz?!
Where Do We Park? And... how do we get there?!
Why are we in town at all? We're not exactly fans of Shakespeare. Anyway, I saw Stratford forty odd years ago, the things you go to see will not have changed.
We are in town to scout out key locations for tomorrow's event. Especially parking, and the walk from parking to the start. We had walked past the start... At least, we had walked past where we thought the start would be. Parking was across the river -- via heavy traffic and closed roads. Too far to go on foot. I really want to see how to get there by car.
We drive out of town towards home, the only clear way that we know will get us out of town. Then we drive round town -- out in the sticks -- to get back to the other side of town. Luckily the sticks are quite close. (In fact, we go way, way out of town... but that's in the next section.)
We find the carpark. Work out how to get there without crossing town. All good. Ready for the morrow.
Out and About: on the edge of the Cotswolds... Lunch at the Howard Arms, Ilmington.. And a few geocaches.
But first: that drive through the sticks.
We just drive. Going generally south and west. Towards the Cotswolds but not -- I think -- into the defined "area of natural beauty". Nevertheless -- it's beautiful! English countryside, fresh and green. Flowers just starting to appear: daffodils, bluebells, amazing flowering trees! Hedges, fields, sheep and lambs. All from inside a warm car :-)
We stop in a little village called Ilmington. We stop for lunch at The Howard Arms, Ilmington. There's lots of fancy food so I choose calf liver with mash and crispy bacon :-) I'm into local traditional food. Deb chooses fish, stonebass.
Both meals are nice but seem a little lightweight. We skip dessert and decide that our next stop will include scones with jam and cream.
More driving. We need to do a bit of shopping, so I head for Shipston-on-Stour. It seems (on the map) to be a town rather than a village. And we've not been there before...
Shipston is, indeed, a very pleasant little town. We park and walk. To a bakery, Taste of the Country, we need a loaf of bread. (The cottage came with a loaf of bread. I may have to provide more description of our accommodation. Later!)
We buy bread (no definitely not sliced and plastic wrapped). Plus some sliced beef and fancy cheddar cheese. I taste a sample of "millionaire's shortbread". We buy four squares. Tonight, we eat at home.
I ask in the bakery, Where would we go for scones and jam and cream? Up to Mrs Brown's tea shop, we're told. Off we go.
Very cosy! I manage to knock over several items as I reach for a menu. Oops. After that I'm very careful. We don't really need a menu. We ask for cream tea for two.
Plain scones have run out so we have fruit scones. Which turn out to be a bit dry. (Baked much earlier that day, perhaps.) The cream is almost as thick as butter, there's plenty of jam. All in all, a very enjoyable "local dish". And at the end of it -- we are no longer hungry.
There's tea towels for sale in the tea shop. Actual Shipston tea towels, not just random flowers with the name of the town on it... Interesting factoid from the tea towel: The town (or location) began with a Saxon name, Shepscoeurten or some such. It means "sheep cleaning place". Saxons would drive their sheep over a ford over the River Stour -- and clean the sheep.
Back to the car. Photograph the public toilet in the carpark. And home again...
We do pick up a few geocaches. The final attempt, Deb decides to stay in the car. So, of course, I fail to find the cache. Very satisfying, though, to have found a few!
Via Stratford. I head roughly north and find the carpark for tomorrow. And check the way there -- to avoid Stratford and its traffic and closed roads. Sure I get lost but now I know where we will be going on Sunday morning.
Dinner of sandwiches -- dleicious bread, good beef, nice cheddar. Yum :-)
I Subscribed to The West: but why?!
The West has been pushing an online subscription as a trial, $1 for the first month. Then they offered AIM members free subscription for six weeks. I took it, so we can read a "home" paper while we are away.
It works. It's a scan of the actual paper. Simple and cheap. I read the latest paper.
Hmmm... Can't do the crossword though.
I'm absolutely knackered and crash into bed, quite early.
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