Stratford-upon-Avon; Sunday, 16 July, 2023

I had intended on having a bit of a lie-in, but the creaking of the floorboards from all over the ancient fabric of the Tudor era building ensured that I was awake by 8am, so I headed down to breakfast and after packing my bags checked out and headed down to the waterfront.

Whilst the town is most known for it’s most famous son, Stratford was a pretty important town both before and after The Bard. Being the centre for sheep trading in this part of the country, with the wool continuing onto Coventry which at the time was one of the most important textile centres in Europe making the farms of Warwickshire highly profitable and Stratford a well-healed town.

As the wool industries dominance faded it was replaced with a more industrial focus, and Stratford jumped on the band, or more canal, wagon and built a link back to Birmingham and the heart of the Canal network. As the canals gave way to the trains and then roads it fell into disrepair before almost succumbing to complete dereliction before becoming the first canal to be fully restored for leisure craft and kickstarted the renovation and reopening of a canal network that today is busier than it was at the height of the golden days of canal traffic.

The canal starts in Bancroft Basin where a lock lifts you up from the Avon into the canal – and today this is the starting point for a canal and river cruise that uses a 21st century narrowboat to tour down the small section of the Avon from the town centre to the Weir just beyond Holy Trinity Church. The tour lasted about 40 minutes including both a descent and an ascent through the lock as well as a detailed audio commentary.

I’d noticed that there were other companies offering different tours, so after the canal tour I headed down to the river side near the theatre and took a tour that repeated the same section to the weir, but then continued back up the river past the canal, under the two town bridges and a fair distance upstream before turning back to the town centre.

By the time I’d gotten back into town the Theatre complex had opened for the day, which meant I was able to head inside and take the lift up the theatre tower to the viewing platform located high above the town with excellent views across both the town and out to the Cotswold hills and beyond.

Back down in the theatre I headed over to the small gallery that houses an exhibition of some of the costumes and props that the RSC and the theatre have created over the years. It’s also home to one of less than 250 surviving copies of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s work – put together by his friends in the years after his death to preserve his work and likely the main reason why Shakespeare is world known. The book was published in 1623, so it appeared only fitting to visit it in it’s 400th year.

Having taken in the gallery I had a bit of a wander around town, before noticing that the open-top bus was running some of the services with a live guide rather than the pre-recorded commentary, so I hopped on the next live guided bus and did a full circuit with a locals view on the town and it’s history.

Back in Stratford I stopped for a very late lunch before heading back to the hotel, grabbing my bags and heading over to the station to start my journey home.