The travels of Tim and Megan: A day in Stratford-upon-Avon

On Saturday 31 October, we got up early and caught a train up to Stratford-upon-Avon. We had spent a day there last winter when we did a tour of the Cotswolds and we wanted to go back to see a bit of the place.

Aside from being a very pretty English town, Stratford-upon-Avon was, of course, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. The town is, therefore, extremely popular with tourists and is actually second only to London in terms of tourist numbers. During our last visit, we bought a ticket for entry into all five of the Shakespeare Properties in and around the town. We only had time to visit one of those last time, so we thought we should try to see some of the others before the tickets expired. We had already seen Shakespeare's Birthplace, which was really interesting.

Our first stop on this visit was New Place & Nash's House. In retirement, a wealthy Shakespeare bought a fine home at New Place, in the centre of town. The house was demolished in 1759 by a subsequent owner and only the grounds remain. An Elizabethan knot garden has been laid out on part of the New Place grounds, which is very pretty. The adjacent Nash's House is where Shakespeare's grand-daughter, Elizabeth Hall, who married Thomas Nash, lived. Elizabeth Hall was the last in Shakespeare's line. Nash's House contains beautiful furniture from the 1800s, showing what the house would have looked like when Hall and Nash lived there, as well as various exhibits telling the town's history.

After visitng New Place we did a spot of shopping on the busy (and scarily Christmassy) streets of the town centre and grabbed some lunch at Subway! We even managed to find a pub that was showing the North London derby on TV and we saw some Arsenal's 3-0 demolition of perennial try-hards, Tottenham.

Then it was off to Hall's Croft. Hall's Croft was owned by Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah, and her husband Dr John Hall, who she married in 1607. The building now contains a collection of 16th and 17th century paintings and furniture and an exhibition about Dr John Hall and the medical practices of the period. The property includes a big garden which contains a variety of plant life that John Hall may have used in his treatments.

From Hall's Croft we walked around 20 minutes to the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon to Anne Hathaway's Cottage. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in 1582. The cottage, which is actually a spacious twelve-roomed farmhouse, was Anne's childhood home and where Shakespeare courted Anne before they were married. The cottage was passed down through the Hathaway family until 1846, and in 1892 it was sold to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. We had a tour of the cottage, which included a very informative talk by one of the guides, and then we wandered in the beautiful gardens and orchard in the cottage grounds. There were some rather strange sculptures in the "Sculture Trail & Tree Garden" - see photos below.

It was starting to get dark, so we headed back into town and popped in to The Old Thatch Tavern (one of the older pubs in Stratford and rumoured to be haunted following a brutal murder at the pub many years ago). It was a very fun, cosy little pub. It was Halloween of course and they had decorated the place nicely. We had a drink and then decided to have dinner there too. The food was awesome. We were served by a large guy dressed as Lurch from the Adams Family and a girl dressed as a cat...she wasn't very scary at all. Then it was back on the train to London - we both slept on the train - long day!