Wednesday 7th December

We awoke to another hearty English breakfast at the hostel before heading into Stratford to visit both the birthplace and resting place of one William Shakespeare. Being an English teacher, this was a big deal for me, I ached for my kids to be just that little bit older to understand why these visits were so significant, but alas, they are just babes themselves.

We headed to the Holy Trinity church first, Shakespeare's resting place, mainly because the kids were up early and it opened first. The church is stunning, the path to the small door, has graveyards either side, and the border of the path is actually made up from fallen headstones. Adam, always the surveyor, noted that that columns in the church were on a lean, while I was taken with the beauty of the pipe organ high above the seated area.

Check out that pipe organ

 I'm not sure what I expected of the grave site, but its a stone carving in the floor right at the back of the church. Shakespeare's wife, daughter and son in law and another member of his family are all buried there. We too photos, we marveled at the beauty of the church, and I silently thanked the bard for plays, the sonnets and most of all the controversy of his life that I so enjoy using to lure teenage minds into the world of Shakespeare.

I purchased some books, postcards and a small bust of the bard to add to my teaching resource kit. Then we headed off to see where he was born and lived.

Xavier passing time just reading the bible.

 The house has been heavily restored, but is beautiful to look at from the street. By this point the kids were going a bit insane, so we quickly made our way through the house and got them in the car to begin the trek home.

The front of the house

Back of the house

We did manage a pit stop to the giant teddy bear in Stratford I had heard so much about to have photos too.

Adam was desperate to see a castle, and we both agreed that while Warrick Castle would be nice enough (although insanely expensive) we both agreed that a ruined castle would be so much more interesting than one that is is full working order. So we set the GPS for Kennilworth Castle a mere 20minute drive from Stratford. When we arrived we discovered that the Castle is closed during the week during the winter despite the guidebooks all telling us it was open 7 days a week. We decided that we would head to Warrick Castle instead and just have a look, not paying the 20pound each to get in to see it, except when we got there, it was 6 pound just to get into the carpark, blow that!

Kenilworth Castle from the carpark

We turned to the trusty GPS to find us something else to go and visit on our way back to London, and noticed that Cadbury world came up. Chocolate, hell yeah, lets go there! So we did. Yes it was expensive to get in, and even the free samples didn't really make up for the entry fee, although the free samples did have me and the kids saying that we had had enough chocolate for one day. But seriously, that place is amazing, and not even the chocolate making stuff.

Cadbury world is set in a town called Bourneville, which was built with the sole purpose of housing the employees of the Cadbury factory. Seriously, as the company grew they needed to move to bigger and bigger premises, so they bought a huge plot of land adjoining the Bourne brook and built the factory. They then built an entire community for the employees to live in, they built homes, schools, a swimming pool, sports fields, they implemented a 5.5 day working week, overtime wages, retirement plans and all kids of other stuff. I was blown away by the whole idea of it all. Amazing.

After our chocolate overload we set the GPS for our home in Kingston. After Stella's frequent tantrums all over the lovely Cotswolds, there was no way I was doing 3 hours on trains to get home again. I begged Adam to drop us at home and take the car back and train home himself, because just quietly I thought he was doing fabulously driving in the towns. He agreed, that was until we got close to London and he say signs for eco something and was convinced it was congestion charges which we had no clue how they worked, so he decided that seeing as Stella had slept a little in the car, we would brave taking the car straight back to the drop off and training it home. *sigh* I was not a happy camper. I suggested that perhaps we could splurge and get a taxi home, I really didn't have it in me to do 3 hours on the train with her.

From the time that Adam decided to return the car to the time we actually returned the car was almost 1.5 hours. With trying to find a petrol station, the GPS giving us no warning of turns, and just general traffic. I think had Adam been able to pick up the car and throw it, he would have. He was far from calm, he was pissed. The kids were whining, I was shitty about the thought of the coming hours, it was all just not going well.

Upon returning the car, the lovely man advised us (after I moaned about hours on the train) that there was a bus from terminal 3 that would have us in the center of Kingston in 25 minutes. WTF? why had we done 3 train changes and almost 3 hours to get to the airport when we could have done it so much easier on a bus? Because people had made out that the trains here were so easy and awesome, and the buses were really confusing and hard work, that's why. Bullocks to that I say. So we bused it to the town center, ate maccas for dinner, then got another bus that literally stops at the end of our street. Hooray, we were finally back home.