Thursday, October 23rd
FIFTH DAY | The countryside's fresh air
Excursion day in Stratford Upon Avon. At 10 o'clock we visited Mary Arden's House, William Shakespeare's mother.
Mary Arden was the youngest of eight daughters of Robert Arden, an affluent Warwickshire husbandman. The farmhouse is situated in the green-field setting of Wilmcote, a village three miles north-west of Stratford.
This is the house were Mary Arden grow up. It is a big farm surrounded by a great garden. People work in there, dressed like in the Elizabethan style, cooking, washing or taking care of the animals. There were pigs and hens.
There were a lot of thing to see but it was very stinky because of the cheese. Indeed the place is used like a real farm and people are using what they are doing in front of the tourist. It's giving lifeto the place and it shows us how people were living at Mary Arden's time.
In 1930 the house was bought by the Birthplace Trust and the interior has been furnished in keeping with a wealthy Tudor farming family. Original features retained include great wooden beams, a stone lagged floor and a great open fire place in the kitchen.
We walked in the garden to see (again) a flight demonstration with an hawk (english people maybe love hawks, I don't know). But this time it was nicer than the last time in Warwick because we could participate!
Almost everybody done it, it was really funny.
The afternoon we passed the day in the Cotswolds. It is a range of hills in west-central England, sometimes called the "Heart of England". The area has been designated as the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The area is characterised by attractive small towns and villages.
There the houses don't look like the british bricks houses that we saw everywhere. I found it was a very nice place and I prefere houses like that because I really don't like bricks. Here the houses looked more ancient but expensiver too.
I remember that we visited a church, but I didn't found it very nice and I prefered this car anyway:
It was a quite long day and we were all very tired. I can also remember that it was very cold and windy.
When we returned to the meetingpoint in Stratford Upon Avon, we met Erika's son, David. We went to a Carnival in the town. I ate the best hot-dog I've had ever eaten and I made some bumper car with David.
Erika & David in the pumber cars
When we arrived home we had to pack our suitcases because the next day, after London, we were leaving for France!
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