Stratford -Day 2

We had a delicious breakfast at our B&B. It is quite cool and overcast this morning. Good. I like it that way. We decide to go to Mary Arden's Farm which we discover is easily accessible by a short train ride to Wilmcote, just two stops from Stratford. A quarter mile walk brings us to the farm. Mary Arden was Shakespeare's mother and this farm is where she lived and where Shakespeare spent a fair amount of time when he was a young boy. Apparently, his parents sent him here in part to get away from the plague ridden city. It is a peaceful and quiet place, a good place to take children. It looks like a farm with people dressed up in clothes of the period and doing chores and crafts of the time. We take a walk on the outer edges of the farm through a meadow of wild flowers. We watch a falconry program done by a woman who showed us a barn owl and an eagle owl. She gives information but is also funny and good at  keeping the attention of the children in the audience.  This is a low key, low tech place - no flashing lights, interactive displays, iPADS dispensing information and so on and I like that. We have lunch at the cafe and then take the train back to Stratford.

We walk to town again around 4:00 but manage to find a little less arduous route this time. We have dinner at Loxley's Restaurant and Wine Bar. It's in a house from the 1600s. The wood beams from the original house are exposed. We have an excellent dinner. Anne and Fave order the fish and chips and I have the hake, a kind of fish.

Tonight we see Arden of Faversham. It is excellent! Anne thought they did a good job with the production. Says there isn't that much to the play and the RSC managed to make the most out of it. No one knows who wrote the play but it was written in the early 17th century so is contemporary with Shakespeare's time. It is a tragedy yet this production also had a lot of dark humor.

The play was only an hour and forty minutes with no break so it is still light when we walk back to our B&B. It has been a lovely day.

    The Eagle Owl used in the falconry program. He flew up on the bench we were sitting on!

   Just an old door with a flower frowning out of the old steps.

                                     Penryn Guest House where we are staying.