William Shakespeare …

Wednesday 28th September

We left a very sunny London to start our second tour, heading out on the M40 driving north west through the Cotswolds just bypassing Oxford, to the town of Banbury. Then we veered off the freeway onto some true winding country lanes, passing through some beautiful villages with their thatched roofed houses and daub and wattle walls. We stopped to have a group photo taken at Anne Hathaway’s house and then drove on to Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of the famous William Shakespeare. This is a town that has maintained the Tudor style architecture of Shakespeare’s time. We toured the house in which he was born and also the house that he lived in when he, as an 18 year old, married the pregnant 26 year old Anne Hathaway and their first child, a daughter was born. It was a two roomed house each room about 4 metres x 4 metres. Very small by today’s standards and quite fascinating. While we were there some Actors performed excerpts from various plays in the garden and answered any questions the public might have. We then spent some time wandering around the town and had our lunch down by the River Avon in the beautiful sunshine.

After lunch we resumed our travelling and visited Coventry, which is a heavily industrialised town that was mercilessly bombed during the 2nd World War. Because of the type of buildings there, the Germans used incendiary bombs which set fire to what was left after the bomb exploded. One of the casualties of this was the Coventry Cathedral which was completed in 1394 and which had been a magnificent Gothic style building. The roof and all the inside was burnt including the stain glass windows, leaving the stone shell as a memorial to that period. The people of Coventry decided that a new cathedral should be built alongside the remnants of the original cathedral. Coventry is an old city similar to Munich, where all the buildings are no more than sixty years old.

Coventry was also the home of a gentleman the Earl Leofric many years ago. He wanted to raise the taxes on his people, however his wife disagreed and pleaded with him to not make the people suffer any more. The Earl said if his wife was prepared to ride naked down the main street on horseback, he would withdraw the tax, so his wife Lady Godiva rode down the street and had the tax removed – which is a lesson to all husbands to never stand in the way of a determined wife! Everyone out of respect closed their doors and averted their gaze to maintain Lady Godiva’s dignity except one person whose name was Tom. He was thereafter known as “peeping Tom”. The people of Coventry have erected a statue and commemorate her with a parade every year.

From Coventry we drove across to Leicester and got onto the M1 then drove north bypassing Nottingham by just a couple of miles. The best known export of Nottingham of course is, Jill!!
We continued on past what remains of Sherwood Forest, bypassing Sheffield a large steel manufacturing city, until we were just south of Leeds. We then left the M1 and travelled into York.
This area which we just travelled through, for our older readers, is the territory that James Herriott lived and worked in (All Creatures Great and Small).

York was the capital of the Viking Empire and there are shops that are listed in the Doomsday Book which is the first Census ever taken, in 1086, therefore there is a lot history associated with this area. Tonight we had a welcome dinner with all the fellow travellers and tomorrow we will explore York on foot before moving on to Edinburgh. There are quite a few Australians again and the rest are mainly American and Canadian.