Day 4 - Oxford, the Cotswolds, Stratford upon Avon, Kenilworth

We got up at a more reasonable hour on Day 4 and got ready to head to the bus stop so we could get to Oxford and catch our train to the Cotwolds. It was only then that I realized I had no pictures of Abingdon, the tiny town bordering Oxford where my friend Didem lives. I also realized I had no pictures of Didem or her fabulous apartment.

So I took a picture of Don waving goodbye to Didem as we waited at the bus stop across from this beautiful little church.

This church is literally right outside Didem's apartment complex. So beautifully English!

The red and white complex you see on the left is Didem's complex. She pays a fortune in rent and in taxes! The county tax is outrageous! You even have to pay a tax to have the internet and a TV! Living in England is even more expensive than I originally thought. 

Waiting at the bus stop.

The bus took ages to come and we missed our train so we had another hour before we could catch the next train to the Cotswolds. So, we walked around Oxford some more and saw this beautiful college.

Then, we found the towpath along the canal and walked from the train station in to town and back. 

Quick story: After arriving in London, I was quickly reminded that smiling at people, which is a perpetual habit of mine, is completely unacceptable and very unwelcome. The moment we landed I started smiling in my habitual, friendly American way at people I passed, people I sat by, and people I asked for help. English people aren't unfriendly, they are just private and proper. As soon as you actually need help or strike up a conversation, they are usually extremely cordial. They just aren't as open and inviting as Americans generally are. It's a cultural difference I had forgotten about but quickly remembered as I got dirty look after confused look after dirty look. In my experience, Europeans in general think you are a creep if you smile at them. That, or that you have a few screws loose. 

As we were walking on the towpath, I once again forgot to not smile (I literally had to remind myself every time I made eye contact with someone for about the first week of the trip) and gave this sour looking woman pushing a pram on the path my biggest hello smile. She gave me the nastiest look I've yet experienced and rushed by me as quickly as she could as if I could give her the crazies if she got too close to me.

Don saw her face and asked what the lady's problem was and I told her I had smiled at her and we laughed because I'd mentioned several times already how many people had given me dirty looks for smiling at them inadvertently. I was glad he'd seen the soul withering look that woman had given me because it was priceless. I wish I'd had a video camera. 

I love England, but if I lived there, I know I'd struggle with the pervasive feeling of unfriendliness. I'm sure I'd adapt quickly but it is hard for me to feel like I can't smile and say hello to everyone I meet without seeming like I'm clinically insane.

Walking on the towpath, still trying to recover from the scathing look of the smile hater.

We had our enjoyable little walk on the towpath and then caught the train to Moreton upon Marsh, a beautiful little village in the Cotswolds. The Cotswold Hills, about an hour outside of Oxford, are dotted with adorable villages, full of thatched roofs and limestone cottages. In medieval England wool was a huge industry and the area produced the best wool in the world and the villages prospered. With the advent of the industrial revolution and the resulting ease in cotton cloth production, the wool industry collapsed leaving the towns dotting the Cotswold hills frozen in time. 

Now, they are a tourist destination for those wanting to see pristine English countryside full of quaint old English cottages.

Welcome to Moreton on Marsh! Everything was so ridiculously quaint! I was in love!

This sign cracked me up. There were no signs for kids crossing, just elderly people. I guess it was a glimpse into the population make-up here?

So many quaint little buildings with topiaries and cool signs.

There were so many tiny doors! This one was about 5 feet tall and the wood plaque above it said "Mind your head".

We saw old school butcher shops like this all through out Europe but I loved this one. I felt like I'd stepped back in time looking in at the pheasants hanging in the window for sale.

More topiaries! I'm kind of obsessed with them.

This is the Priory Deli where we got our lunch.

Inside the cute little deli. The lady let us try several interesting English cheeses and I got broccoli and Stilton (a strong English cheese) soup and Don got a steak pie, which was actually really tasty. We ate our picnic out in the rain on this bench in the island in the middle of the road.

We stored our bags at the Laundrette while we were there. 

Waiting for the bus to Chipping Camden, another beautiful little Cotswold town.

Our half hour bus ride through the hills from Moreton on Marsh to Chipping Camden was the most beautiful stretch of road I've been on in my life. There were gorgeous green rolling hills and hedges and sheep and beautiful little chapels and villages and we wound up and down on narrow roads through the hills so we got up high above the valleys and had amazing views. I can't even describe how overwhelmingly beautiful it was. I was on the edge of my seat trying to take it all in and I took a ton of pictures but none of them really turned out. Look at the picture below and try to imagine how beautiful it all really was. Wow.

And here is Chipping Campden. The pictures just don't do it justice but I couldn't help but try. Everything is so cohesive and so old!

This street (High Street) is wide so that the villagers could bring livestock and packhorses laden with freshly shorn fleeces in to the market to be sold. Merchants from all over Europe would come here to buy the high quality wool. Chipping Campden was once the home of the richest wool merchants in the Cotswolds and little has changed on High Street since the 1840s. 

Walking through a walkway between shops on High street.

Cobbled streets and crookedy roofs. And topiaries and hanging baskets! So adorable!

This is the Grevel house, the oldest house in Chipping Campden. It was built in 1367. The upper floor was added in the 16th century.

This is the Market Hall, which was built in 1627 and was where people in town would buy and sell produce.

Inside the Market Hall.

Walking along the street looking at the town hall and war memorial statue.

I loved this half timbered house with it's weather and crooked wood exposed. It's amazing to me that these homes have stood for so long!

This little chapel was beautiful inside and the pastor was so friendly. He was preparing for a funeral and told us all about the architecture despite being incredibly busy that day.

Don looking in at the church.

More tiny doors! People were so short in the 14th century!

And here is another adventure that I think ranks up there as one of the best parts of the trip. There are paths all through England. In fact, there was a sign at the Market Hall saying "100 miles to Bath". You can walk on paths through fields all the way to Bath! The English fiercely protect their right to walk anywhere they want across the country. Every year the Rambling Society organizes a "Mass Trespass" when each of the country's 50,000 miles of public footpaths are walked. By assuring each path is used at least once a year, they stop landlords from putting up fences. 

We decided to check out the footpath behind Chipping Campden and we loved it! We slogged through a ridiculously muddy field up to the top of a hill and looked out over the beautiful area. We got so mud-covered and filthy, but it was well worth it. Oh, the joy of a chilly English walk! 

The footpath ran along an irrigation canal.

The hill we hiked up (or slid up). It was so muddy!

Looking down on Chipping Campden.

The village at the top of the hill. It was so quaint and ritzy at the same time. We decided it felt kind of like Carmel, CA. Very small and very expensive.

A thatched roof! Isn't it beautiful?

Super cool hedges and landscaping

More thatched roofs!

Walking back to town.

Delicious looking produce for sale outside one of the shops.

After our hour exploring Chipping Campden, we got on a bus to Stratford upon Avon, where William Shakespeare (who may or may not be the William Shakespeare, the author) was born.

The sun came out for a few minutes and lit up the beautiful green hills all around. It was breathtaking.

We arrived in Stratford upon Avon and saw the canal boats on the river Avon. It was a beautiful and unexpectedly sunny afternoon.

We walked in to town and enjoyed all the half timbered houses and hustle bustle of a bigger city. 

These two pictures are repetitive but I loved the lighting on the top one and what you can learn about the city in the one below so I had to put them both in.

And here is William Shakespeare's birthplace. We read that this was the best place to learn about W.S. so we checked it out. We only had an hour before everything was closing (at 4:00 pm! Crazy!) so we spent it here. I am a huge Shakespeare nerd and in my Shakespeare class in college, we talked a lot about conspiracy theories that Shakespeare was a pseudonym for a well-educated upper class man or woman with a huge vocabulary who wrote plays as a secret hobby. This kind of writing would have been considered improper for someone in high society since a playwright was considered a low-class profession. Don and I were both pretty disappointed with the lack of information about Shakespeare and his life at this birthplace museum. It seems really unlikely to me that this William Shakespeare is the William Shakespeare because he was a middle class man, a son of a glovemaker, with very little education and there is no evidence that he wrote anything in his lifetime. He left no writings in his will and no one of note attended his funeral, which would have been highly unusual for an author with such popularity and prestige during his lifetime. Even the queen was a fan of Shakespeare's. The lack of any real information about Shakespeare at his birthplace just further led me to believe the conspiracy theories; there must have been another person who wrote as Shakespeare.

Walking through the garden.

Two actors who would randomly start acting out sections of Shakespeare's plays.

Inside the house. Shakespeare's father was a glove maker and the mayor of Stratford, so the family lived quite well. 

Don trying on some gloves in the glove-making shop.

I liked the lighting in these pictures in the shop.

One of the bedrooms in the house. In the 1600s, they painted fabric and hung it on the walls as wallpaper. 

You can see the original timbers exposed in the ceiling...

This is the room where Shakespeare was born. 

A view of the back of the house

And me in front of the house.

An interesting war memorial in the center of town with yet another ridiculously tiny door.

I felt like Alice in Wonderland in this picture. 

Beautiful half timbered houses. My favorite ones in town, actually.

After our rather uneventful few hours in Stratford, we took a bus to Coventry to meet up with one of Don's college roommates, John Stovall. John and his wife Dakin and their three kids just recently moved from Boston to Coventry because John got a professorship at the University of Warwick.

We didn't know that Dakin and John were moving a day before we were coming to visit 'til we got their Christmas card. They said they didn't want to tell us because they didn't want to discourage us from coming to visit them. I could not believe we sprung in on them just a day after moving and that they took such great care of us despite! They made a delicious dinner for us the night we got there and we helped them unpack a little and then we played lots of games. It was so great to catch up and be with people we love so much. 

John and Dakin doing laundry in their surprisingly large kitchen. 

We slept in the living room and I slept better this night at the Stovalls than I did the rest of the trip. The bed was so comfortable!

Much information about the Cotswolds found in Rick Steves' England, 2007.