Henley in Arden in the rain

The Church

The Castle - nothing left of it! Just wet grass to walk through as the rain came down :) The Time Team people were here in 2002 and found some bits from the fort.

 The Heritage Centre

Excellent displays and lots to see, free as well.

We both arrived back rather wet - hopefully not a prelude to the holiday!

St John's House and Mill Garden

Maddy started her volunteering at the library today so Geoff and I spent 2 hours wandering around some parts of Warwick we hadn't looked at before. A quick round St. John's House a Jacobean house and home of both a Victorian museum, garden and the regimental museum for the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Museum (Royal Warwickshire).

these were very strange, made from coloured garden ties

St John's House

Kitchen 

Mill Lane

Mill Lane Garden

Town Houses

The houses in town were Hall's Croft, Havard House and Shakespeare's birthplace we also wandered to Holy Trinity Church to see his grave.

door knocker

Hall's Croft

Havard House

Shakespeare's birthplace

born in this bedroom

5 houses in 5 hours

We did a bit of local sight seeing today and visited the 5 properties owned by the Shakespeare Birthplace trust, as well as Holy Trinity Church where he's buried. Yes we went to Stratford upon Avon as it's only 20 minutes down the road. We started with the 2 outlying properties, Anne Hathaway's Cottage (wife) and Mary Arden's Farm (mother).
The cottage had some wonderful gardens we need to explore further, so with a pass valid for a year for all 5 houses we will be going back. Scarecrows from potatoes and feathers were different too!

Mary Arden's Farm is a working Tudor form with a blacksmith, cooks, basket weaver and falconer that we saw. The actual cottage was much like the last one, heavy dark furniture, small windows and floors at a slant.

19th July Day 2

The second day of our holidays and it was the Medieval Festival weekend at Kenilworth Castle. Jousting, Falconry, Grand Melee, firearms, archery, wild venison burgers plus a great selection of tents selling goods.

18th July School Holidays :)

Today is the first day of the Summer holidays, no school now until September. Our first trip out was an afternoon to the Classic Air Museum where we got to look round both the Shackleton and the Nimrod.