Sequoia House Hotel Stratford-upon-Avon

With time rapidly dwindling I went down to Banbury way this afternoon to visit my brother et famille before I leave, taking the opportunity to say goobye to two young nephews - one of whom was able to appreciate some of the implications of what I am doing, "But what if you get sick?" he asked. :-)

Back up to Stoke in the late evening. Last day of preparations tomorrow.

... skit from the guy, which I also taped most of. It was quite hilarious.

Then after that, the ticket for the bus and houses also came with a river cruise. It took about 45 minutes and was just really relaxing and the guy doing the commentary was really nice and knew some really interesting things about the town.

So that took up one day, and I forgot to type in before, but our first day we went to Holy Trinity Church - where ...

... arriving at the Roadblock. Since they are equally matched in every respect, Alex decides he might as well take the challenge and dives into the pool. 11:05 - Agi & Claudia (3rd) arrive at Stonehenge, having rocked with the navigation. At 11:08 Dave & Boon-Mee (4th) arrive, followed by Glora & Kay (5th) at 11:11. All three teams see Dean & Penne still playing cricket and decide to go for Ruins option, although ...

... Earl of Leicester, transformed Kenilworth from a medieval fortress into one of the greatest Tudor palaces so he could entertain Queen Elizabeth I in style for 19 days in 1575, costing millions of pounds. The Keep was breeched during the Civil War in the 1600s. The Great Hall where they dined was huge. It was so cold ...

Stephen drove us to Chipping Campden (20 min. away) for our 4 hour walk. It was bitterly cold as a wind was blowing but the sun was out. It was a lovely village and had a lovely open stone market hall from 1627 with an uneven stone floor.









We ...

... crooked walls, stone floors and period furniture. Youngest children slept in a trundle (trunkle bed) until old enough to handle a candle in their parents room and then up to 4 of them share a largish single bed.





We then walked around the markets and then past Garrick’s Inn, Nash’s house, the Alms houses and Hall’s ...

... another pretty little Cotswold village with a stream, pub and a trout farm. We had a map with directions and they were very bad directions, because we got lost from box 1 and ended up doing the walk back to front and totally wrong sections. It snowed the whole time and was wet snow so after a couple of ...

... and river and beautiful country on the other. It was started in 1068 by William the Conqueror. It was owned until 1978 by the Earls of Warwick and then bought the Tussaud Group. We walked over the drawbridge and explored first in the towers of the Gatehouse and Barbican. They had 2 port cullis to lower to keep people out and if they trapped people ...

... Stow-on-the-Wold and saw the Royalist pub 976AD – oldest pub in England and then to Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter – 2 lovely little villages around a stream and then on to Broadway.










Went out to dinner at Margaret’s in the village of Radway. She lives in the old school house next to the church

... etc, all his offspring either died young, or died childless. We then visited the Nash House and Croft House. They were both houses acquired by Shakespeare and left to his 2 daughters and their husbands, hence the name of the houses. The Nash House is used to display what upper middle-class life was like. As for the Croft House, the display was about health-care and medicine during that time period. They were all very well thought out exhibitions in my ...