Second honeymoon part 2

Well, after the horror that was the RSC, we had a better day on Wednesday, exploring Alcester, a small market town dating from Roman times, about 10 miles from Stratford. This had a lovely centre, with loads of independent shops,lots of bunting still up from their royal wedding street party, and plenty of reasonably priced places to have a meal.

We then went a couple of miles out of Alcester, to Coughton Court, another National Trust property. It has been the home of the same family since the 15th century and was at the centre of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. The Throckmorten family who live there were prominent in Tudor times, then fell out of favour as they were Catholics - if you climb up to the tower in the house you can still see a priest hole where a Catholic priest would have been hidden if the Protestants had come hunting during the years of Catholic persecution. Later on, in the 18th and 19th century the family were prominent in Catholic emancipation, and one of them became the first Catholic MP. There are also two churches in the grounds, the original one that became Church of England at the Reformation, and a Catholic one, built in 1855, once it was possible to worship freely. If you climbed on up the tower past the priest hole you could also stand on the tower roof for views over the property!

Thursday was spent exploring first Baddesley Clinton, a National Trust property north of Warwick. This one dates from the 13th century and has a moat and even more priest holes than Coughton Court. Plus some beautifully laid out grounds and a (small) lake.

And second, Packwood House, only a couple of miles from Baddesley, and a completely bonkers historic house - basically a 16th century house extensively modified in the early 20th century to make it look more, erm, Tudor. The owner then gave it to the National Trust so that it would stay just like that. This one was fun as we were allowed to take photos (without flash) inside the house.

And the gardens here were incredibly. A set of massive yew trees, known as the "Sermon on the Mount", beautiful flowers and yet another lake to walk round. Unfortunately they'd had a power cut so we had to go back to Baddesley to have a cup of tea(!).

 We finished off Thursday with dinner with a friend over near Solihull.

Friday was our last day, and more of a pottering around kind of day. I spent most of the morning at Stratford knitting group - a nice friendly group that meets in a café near Shakespeare's birthplace. One of their members who I also "know" from Archers Listeners got in touch after hearing about our dreadful RSC experience and invited me along (good thing I took the laptop on holiday, and whinged about the RSC online!), but I would highly recommend looking in advance for local knitting groups if you're going on holiday somewhere - nice people to meet, yarn shop recommendations, local recommendations, the chance to pretend you're not really a tourist but are hanging out with the locals...

We then went over to Leamington Spa to have some lunch in the Royal Pump Rooms, then wandered over to find Web of Wool, which I'd visited on last year's holiday. One sad knitter had to stand outside a very shut shop - although obviously someone was expecting to be there that day as there was a pint of milk on the doorstep!

And after picking up a leaflet at Leamington tourist information, we decided to spend the afternoon at Ryton Organic Gardens, a short drive away. These were really cool, the headquarters of Garden Organic, whose catalogue I get, but I'd never thought of them having an actual place you could visit. They had some cool interactive displays, giant plastic vegetables to stand next to (!) and beautiful gardens to wander around. I liked playing with the compost bins...

And that was pretty much the end of the holiday. Except, I saw this in a shop window in Stratford:

And wondered who on earth would be making the most of their summer by... doing the ironing?!

Second honeymoon part 1

For our first wedding anniversary we decided to return to Stratford-upon-Avon for another week's holiday. We went there on honeymoon, but only got 5 nights away due to difficulties getting time off work, so didn't get to half the places we intended to. We booked to stay in the same flat this year as we'd liked it so much.

We travelled down on the Saturday and found a lovely independent bookshop in Thame on the way, called the Book House. It has two puffins sat outside its front door, one called the Fat Puffin, one called Muffin! I would love to live near a shop like this - it had a great range of books, including an enormous children's section and a little garden you could sit in too. I bought a copy of the Morville Hours by Katherine Swift too, a book I've been meaning to read for ages.

On Sunday I went to church at Holy Trinity, Stratford, where Shakespeare is buried. It was fun going somewhere different to my usual church - at this one they sang the hymns twice as fast as at home!

Then we went to The Lunt Roman fort, just outside Coventry.  c. 2000 years ago this was the frontier of the Roman empire (slightly hard to imagine now, with the traffic noise from the A46!). But it's a fun sight, lacking all the usual tourist amenities (no overpriced tourist tat on sale, no extortionate admission fee but there are loos and a few picnic benches). Bits of a mock Roman fort have been built on some parts of the archaeological dig, so you can climb on the ramparts and pretend to be a Roman legionary, and go in the gyrus (a horse training ring, this is the only known example in Britain).

And on to Coombe Abbey country park, once the site of a monastery until the Reformation in the 16th century, then a country house, with grounds designed by Capability Brown in the 18th century, the park now belongs to Coventry City Council, although the house itself has been sold off and turned into a hotel. And it's really lovely. Although the part around the car parks and visitor centre are quite crowded, it's easy to get away from those into peaceful woodland. You can walk part way round the lake, and visit a bird hide (parts of the site are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and there are lots of herons nesting). There are formal gardens and a deer park to explore (but we only saw some sheep). There is also the pleasant and reasonably priced herons café on site, where we had lunch, and later a cup of tea.

On Monday, we did some shopping in Stratford town centre, then went for a walk along the River Avon, up one way, crossed over, then walked back along the other bank, stopped to watch some barges go through a lock on the way. One barge was called "Cheeky Monkey" and had monkeys in the window...

Tuesday we headed over to visit Charlecote Park, a National Trust property not far from Stratford. It dates from the 12th century, although most of it is mock Tudor (actually 19th century) in appearance. The rooms are huge and there is a restaurant in what was the Orangery, as well as a garden centre (at which I may have indulged).

We then drove on into Warwick, where we had a cup of tea conveniently close to Warwick Wools and I bought some Sirdar Simply Recycled DK to make one of the patterns from the summer Interweave Knits. We also visited Warwick Books, where I picked up an Alan Titchmarsh gardening book. We also had a look in Warwick Museum - which was rather good. Small and free, but well thought out with displays aimed at all age groups. If you're in the area it's well worth a look. I took a picture of a plesiosaur, which died out about 65 million years ago, as it reminded me of reading Remarkable Creatures for reading group last month.

Then it was back to the holiday flat ready for an outing to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to see the Merchant of Venice. Unfortunately the OH had done his back in that morning so I ended up having to go on my own. And WHAT a disappointment. Bad signage meant I couldn't find the entrance I was supposed to use, then I was sold a programme for a different play (despite showing the seller my ticket), by the time I'd sorted that out and found the entrance the play had started and they'd given my seat(s) to someone else and I got shoved behind a pillar! Then it turned out to be the biggest load of complete rubbish I think I've ever seen at the theatre - involving an Elvis impersonator, Batman, Robin and a blue teddy bear cavorting round the stage. I left during the interval...

To be continued....

Honeymoon purchases

And to round off the series of wedding/honeymoon posts, only getting-on-for-two-months-since-we-got-married, here are my honeymoon purchases!
First of all from the Yarn Gathering in Coventry. 7 balls of Grignasco Merino Gold in burgundy (and one in grey which isn't pictured). This is  really good value, machine washable 100% merino wool. Hopefully to make the Essential Cardigan, from Interweave Knits Summer 2010.

Then from Warwick Wools 8 balls of Sirdar Supersoft Aran to make jumpers for the nephews for Christmas. Although it's 100% acrylic it doesn't feel like it. And a ball of Regia Hand-Dye Effect sock yarn, 'cos it looked fun.

And this pattern for the Supersoft Aran jumpers for the nephews.

Warwick was also good for bookshops, I bought one of these from the secondhand bookshop, and the other one in Warwick Books!

The final purchase, from Web of Wool in Leamington Spa has already found its way across the Atlantic as part of Tabitha's thank you present for the wedding shawl she made me!

Honeymoon

And finally, I blog about the honeymoon! Life has been totally mad since we got back home (nearly a month ago now!). Work has been really busy and I've been working late a bit, and clearing up after the wedding, and sorting out stuff like wedding photos and writing letters and things like that! And trying to get caught up on some gardening whenever the weather cools enough to let me spend any time outside. Last night I was attempting to weed at 21.45 as it got dark as that was the first time it was cool enough!

We stayed in the most fabulous Victoria Apartment in Stratford, which even came equipped with knitting books! No, I did not know about this in advance, despite the OH's suspicions!

The apartment was in a great location, and even had its own car parking space, which made getting the luggage in considerably easier than if we'd had to park several streets away. It was only five minutes walk from Shakespeare's Birthplace in the centre of Stratford:

We did "do" the Shakespeare properties (well, four of the five) although the Birthplace itself is overwhelmingly, awfully, touristy. It looks pretty though. Apart from the slip hazard sign outside it. Pretty gardens though (look at that grass. It's green. Can anyone remember seeing green grass? Ours is yellow at home thanks to the lack of rain).

As well as doing the terrifically touristy Shakespeare places (if you're going, Hall's Croft, where Shakespeare's daughter lived, is nice, quieter and with a beautiful garden), we had some days out in the car. One day we went to Coventry, stopping en route in the suburb of Earlsdon to visit the Yarn Gathering:

I'd never been in a yarn shop with it all arranged by colour before. It looked amazing! I also met Kate, whose blog I've been reading for about five years now.

Honeymoon yarn and book purchases will feature in another post. Otherwise this one will win some kind of world record for length of post!

We explored Coventry, which the OH used to know very well. It was years since I've been in Coventry cathedral, old and new versions:

I think I like the old medieval cathedral best. It was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, so is now an empty, but evocative, space.

On a different day we went over to Warwick, where we found Warwick Wools, and also Warwick Books. We loved Warwick, as it still felt friendly and townish with not many of the big chain shops, just lots of independents. Both the wool and book shops were very friendly, with a good range of stock in relatively small amounts of space (the wool was piled up to the ceiling!).

In Warwick we visited the Lord Leycester Hospital, not a medical hospital but one of those institutions that housed the needy and aged hundreds of years ago.

 

It had some fascinating buildings, and yet another beautiful garden!

We avoided Warwick Castle, as it looked like a theme park and cost a fortune to get into so ventured on to Leamington Spa for some lunch, and where I managed to accidentally find Web of Wool (which I'd forgotten was there!). How much sock yarn?! Another lovely shop.

After some lunch we journeyed onwards to Kenilworth Castle, which we had virtually to ourselves. This was lovely as there was plenty to explore and see, and it wasn't at all touristy (plus, there weren't any audio guides. We hate audio guides! They turn going to an exhibition into a miserable experience). There was a new Elizabethan Garden set out last year, pictured below, with the castle behind.

Parts of the castle date from the 12th century, although there are plenty of later additions. There is also a tea room with very tasty scones...

A lot of the honeymoon was spent mooching around Stratford, and walking along the banks of the Avon and the Stratford canal, not just visiting places! It was a shame we'd managed to choose the week when there weren't any plays on at the Royal Shakespeare Company, although the main theatre is still being refurbished.

On the drive home we stopped off for some lunch at Stowe Landscape Gardens:

We had an hour's walk in the gardens and didn't cover a third of it! It is one of the stranger places I've visited, surely only a Brit would be mad enough to fill a landscape with enormous temples and monuments?

But still, a beautiful place to visit and a good finishing touch for the honeymoon!

Hopefully it won't be so long this time before my next post as there won't be so many pictures to sort out...

Reading group

I still go to a reading group once a month. It's a nice group with a mixture of working and retired people in it so a good mixture of ages and life experience. We choose the books from a lengthy list supplied by the library, basically of books they have multiple copies of. Last year's books weren't too good, but this year's have been a bit better. In March we had Lionel Shriver's "The post-birthday world", which I didn't get on well with. I found her "We need to talk about Kevin" compelling reading, but I just couldn't get into this one. It wasn't helped by being quite lengthy and with me attempting to read it at the same time as moving house. The plot is along the lines of "Sliding doors" as in two different outcomes develop from one point in time. Trouble was, I didn't care about the characters so I didn't really care about the developments in the story!

April's book was "The piano teacher" by Janice Y.K. Lee. OK, so it's not a great work of fiction, but it was a significant improvement on "The post-birthday world". It's highly readable and interesting, but not quite at the chick-lit end of the spectrum (not that there's nothing wrong with chick-lit by the way!). The action flits backwards and forwards between Hong Kong during the Second World War, and in the early 50s where people are dealing with the repercussions of the war. Some very interesting stuff, which made me want to go away and find out more about the history of the area. Some of the characters aren't particularly convincing though and seemed to be stereotypes rather than "real" though. A couple of reading group members had lived in Hong Kong back in the 70s so could tell us how true to life the book actually was too.

I'm not going to read May's book as the meeting will be when we're on honeymoon and I fancied a month off to catch up on some other reading. So the next reading group book I'll be reading will be Edith Wharton's "House of mirth" for the June meeting (actually in July!). Apart from the group books I'm still reading "Singled out" by Virginia Nicholson, which has been on the go for a while now.

Knitting-wise, I'm trying to decide what to knit next once Thermal is finished. I want to decide on a sock pattern to make with the Opal Cotton Farli sent me, I could do with some more cotton socks now the weather has finally turned warmer. I was also thinking about making the Tea Leaves Cardigan after reading LeafGreenKnits blog about it. I had thought about buying some yarn for this on honeymoon, but I also have this in my stash which would work?

We will be honeymooning in Stratford-upon-Avon and have rented an apartment in the centre for five nights. I've already identified one potential yarn shop to visit in Coventry (where we were planning to spend a day anyway) - the Yarn Gathering, which I read about on Knit the Knit's blog. We were hoping to go and see the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in action, but of course, have managed to choose the one week when there isn't anything on! But there are plenty of National Trust properties round there so we'll probably visit one or two of those.