Coventry; Sunday, 21 February, 2010

07:30 is not normally a time I am familiar with on a Sunday, but I had set my alarm early so that I could get over to the station and get the first train of the morning into Birmingham so I could get an early connection out to Stratford-upon-Avon. That plan started to fall apart the moment I pulled the blind up and spotted that outside it was a bit white.

Overnight there had been a small amount of snow. Unfortunately, this is the UK and any quantity of snow is enough to cause travel disruption so it was with some trepidation I walked to the station. I was right to, instead of leaving at 08:37 my train finally pulled out a minute or so before 9am. I had had 22 minutes to make my connection in Birmingham, I now had zero minutes. Might just have been doable if it was cross platforms, but the connection was from a different station a five minute walk away so I knew I was going to have a long wait for the same train I would have caught if I had gotten up an hour later!

I arrived in Birmingham and walked between New Street and Moor Street stations. It was the first time I have ever been to Moor Street station and I was really surprised how picturesque it was for a major city centre station. Unlike New Street which is completely covered in and, quite frankly, a horrible station, Moor Street was really pleasant, with a particularly nice little cafe on the concourse where I wiled away a large part of my hour wait for the train to Stratford.

Thankfully the rest of my journey turned out to be smooth and I arrived in Stratford just after 11am. I headed into the centre of town, and first stop was the bus tour. I did a full circuit of the route, partly to get my bearings on the city, but also to avoid the large coach loads of tour parties which were hitting the museums as I arrived.

Stratford is a pretty little town, but its reason for being so popular is based on its most famous son. One William Shakespeare, born and brought up in the town, it’s also the place he retired to and is now buried in the parish church. Given his impact on English Literature it’s no real surprise that this small Warwickshire town is one of the most visited places in the UK outside of London. It does however mean that even on a snowy Sunday in mid February it was still very busy with tourists.

Having done a circuit on the tour bus I walked down to Shakespeare’s birthplace house and museum, and then on to the Nash House and New Place. From there it was back onto the tour bus out to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage before heading back into town to visit Holy Trinity Church and a visit to Shakespeare’s grave.

By now I was pretty well Shakespeare’d out so I headed back to the station to get the train back to Birmingham and then onto Coventry.

After dropping my stuff off at the hotel I had a wander around the city centre taking some night photos of the Cathedral before heading off for some dinner and then the comfort of my bed.