Two weeks in England: The Plan; Singapore stopover; nothing to wear; cream tea at The Relais Henley; not visiting Blenheim Palace, Woodstock; not visiting Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford Upon Avon; Roy’s family birthday
It wasn’t easy for Roy to leave the house we’re having built in Perth WA, especially at rather a critical point – our cursed builder went into liquidation, remember? – but this trip had been booked a year earlier. Two weeks in England, then the full month of June in the South of France – bookended by three days in Singapore.
He had planned this first post-COVID trip to England mainly with extended family in mind. It felt well due. His sister Lyndsay and John live near Stratford Upon Avon, so it made sense to kick off with a week there. Then, not having seen Aunty Marjorie, cousin Richard and cousin Kate for far too many years, we would head up to the Wirrall and Liverpool for a few days. Finally, we’d spend four nights in London.
Getting there
We took an SIA flight from Perth to Singapore, arriving on the evening of Sunday 12 May for three days with the ever-hospitable Paul and Salinah. Thanks, guys!
Singapore, all about food and friends… and foodie friends
They do not love that do not show their love.”
Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The A380 to London, Heathrow was as comfortable as SIA always is, plus the addition of Taittinger Comte de Champagne Blancs-de-Blancs, surreptitiously snuck in from First Class with deepest apologies for Roy’s tray table not working. (Ag, shame!) With departure at 11.30pm, and a flight of nearly 14 hours – it’s uphill going northwest, they say – dinner was the last thing on our minds. And breakfast the second-last thing. (Yet there’s a special champagne pouch, who knew?)
Tis one thing to be tempted … another thing to fall.”
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
What’s more, we got through Heathrow in an unbelievable 10 minutes’ flat. Then we picked up the hire car without delay – a Citroën C4, just to get us in the mood for June in the South of France; and with not far to go to our first overnight stop at the historic town of Woodstock, decided to go via Henley-on-Thames.
In the past, I’ve waxed lyrical about in-car navigators, and their role as marriage saviours. No more male fury at the sight of maps held upside-down; no more spousal despair at each missed turnoff. The driver now becomes the navigator, too.
However, these devices are not without challenges. The Citroën’s navigator was hell-bent on traversing every single-track byway, tiny road and country lane it could find. As a reminder how I feel about these stomach-churning, knuckle-whitening English country lanes, click here for my very first blog post on Travels with Verne and Roy, published in June 2016. I was a wuss then, and I remain a wuss.
Time and the hour run through the roughest day.”
Shakespeare, Macbeth
Henley-on-Thames
We know Henley fairly well, having moored there several times on our replica Dutch barge Karanja during the summer of 2016, before heading across the Channel to Calais in 2017. (See here, here and here.) We were getting to know our boat, while having a grand old time pootling up and down the Thames and visiting some of England’s most picturesque riverside towns and villages.
This time, we were popping in for a specific purpose – to check out a hotel. I’m now thrilled to be doing freelance writing/editing work for The Relais Group, which currently has two rather gorgeous English waterside properties: The Relais Henley, and The Relais Cooden Beach in Sussex. (More on Cooden Beach later.)
The Relais Henley
GM Andrew Oxley showed us around this beautifully restored listed building. Originally a 16th-century coaching inn called the Red Lion, it still has a large red lion poised on its portico; and probably always will, as that’s the name that it is required to trade under… something to do with its listed building status?
It’s ideally located just steps from the Thames, a couple of hundred metres from the town centre with its Waitrose supermarket, etc., and adjacent to The Angel pub on the bridge that takes you across the river to the Leander Club. (Click here for my blog on what it was like to stay there.)
The inner courtyard – which horse-drawn coaches would sweatily have clattered into in bygone days – had for some time been a parking lot for horseless carriages, until the establishment’s owner kicked out the cars and turned it into a charming gravelled garden complete with tables. And, incidentally, several more guest rooms, bringing the total up to 40.
One side of the courtyard is Chantry House (above left, painted yellow) which provides office accommodation for Andrew and his team and is rented from the neighbouring church.
We were kindly served tea in the hotel’s Quarterdeck Bar, plus light-as-air scones with clotted cream and jam. If I wasn’t handicapped by chatting with Andrew between hastily gobbled mouthfuls of sticky crumbs, I would certainly have had a second one. And if we hadn’t arrived so early, we could perhaps have lunched at the Relais Henley’s Restaurant Dominic Chapman. Andrew explained that Dominic is something of a local celebrity chef, who succeeds admirably in drawing bums to seats.
I bear a charmed life.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Historic Town of Woodstock
On the way to Woodstock, Roy stopped – unsolicited, for once! – at a White Horse pub, to have a half of something. When this rare and unlikely event happens, I’ll order a drink whether I’m thirsty or not, fully aware that it may never happen again. (Roy is not a pub man.) A Thai chef was busy in the kitchen, and custom was quite steady, if not brisk.
In the high street, The Bear looked like a civilised place for a pre-prandial tipple. And so it was.
Review: Brothertons Brasserie, Woodstock
You might need to book for this Italian joint in the High Street, struggling a bit tonight with a full house and just two staff members who made a sterling effort.
We shared the house salad (£12) of Parma ham, avo and tomato. Then Roy had the outstanding calves’ liver, fegato alla Veneziane (£23) and I the tasty veal involtini (£23), both of which came with sautéed potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower. Really good!
Not visiting Blenheim Palace
England is littered with historic towns. What makes Woodstock special is that it’s right next to Blenheim Palace.
I’d never visited Blenheim Palace, and – if I didn’t do it this time, when it was literally a seven-minute walk from our annex accommodation at 7 New Road – I doubt I ever will. An adult pays £38 for an entry ticket that’s valid for a year… but you have to book in advance online.
My morning walk took me around the area, just outside the venerable old palace walls, and through gates that led across a big and lovely field that announced itself as the footpath to Bladen. I even spotted a deer, at about the same time as a portly little corgi whose owner said he’d never seen a deer there before, though he mentioned that the park teemed with rabbits. So, I felt lucky. I might have felt even luckier had I not stepped into a messy of doggy-do, deer-do or whatever. (Definitely not rabbit-do – far too big and squishy.)
Stratford-Upon-Avon, 18-24 May
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
So, here we are in Stratford-Upon-Avon for a week, strategically timed for Roy to host his birthday dinner on 20 May at nearby Welford-on-Avon (4 miles WSW of Stratford, in the county of Warwickshire), where his sister Lyndsay and John and Marianne and Phil now live.
It’s our first time back since September 2019, making a visa run from Karanja in Moissac, France because I hadn’t managed that year to get a long-sejour visa. How distant that all seems: nowadays, the standard 90-day Schengen visa is fine.
Sunday in Stratford
It being time to stretch my legs again, a riverside run seemed in order. Yes, the sky looks incredibly blue, and it was; but this proved to be the sole warm, sunny day of our English fortnight.
Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.”
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Staying in Stratford Upon Avon
We spent the whole week in the old three-storey Shakespeare House, courtesy of booking.com, and it was perfect for us: the right location, just a minute’s walk from the high street with its M&S, Tesco Express, Sainsbury’s etc.
There’s also the Prospero Lounge – part of what turned out to be a chain of cute and casual all-day dining and drinking spots. (We’d also end up at one in the Wirral with cousin Richard and Jacklin the following week.)
If you bear right down Henley Street at the old Barclays building on the roundabout, you find the discreetly barricaded Birthplace of Shakespeare (below): it’s the one that looks in need of a fresh coat of paint.
You enter the Bard’s birthplace through the modern, red-brick Shakespeare Centre (below) for a fee of £26. That also gets you entrance to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, the 12-roomed farmhouse in Shottery, about a mile west of Stratford.
I had every intention of revisiting Shakespeare’s birthplace, though it would have been on my own, as Roy declares that it’s “very fresh” in his memory. Yeah, right… we toured the Bard’s birthplace and Anne’s cottage together 30 years ago.
Lord, lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!”
Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II
Somehow, I didn’t manage it this time around. And now I suspect that I never will… not if I couldn’t get there this time, staying literally a three-minute walk from Henley Street.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Review: Shakespeare House, 12 John Street, Stratford Upon Avon
No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
William Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well
Let’s start with the best things – apart from the location, of course. One day of summery sunshine, which even saw me catching a tan on the patch of fake grass in the little back garden, was followed by more typically cold and rainy English summer weather.
So the glassed-in conservatory off the kitchen was a lovely little sun-trap, the warmest part of the house. I also loved my gloriously camp bathroom, complete with free-standing bathtub, gold taps – the basin ones with a swan motif – wall-to-ceiling tiles and more. Roy’s suave black-and-white themed shower room brought him joy, too; especially as his now-svelte physique fitted into the petite shower enclosure.
Darran, who owns the house, requested that we kindly not use the second and third bedrooms located on the third level. The rental depends on the number of guests, you see. But we had to use them as dressing rooms, hoiking our luggage up a breathtakingly precipitous flight of stairs.
I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture.”
William Shakespeare, in his will
As always, we’d far rather stay in a house or an apartment than at a hotel. Especially when it’s as carefully furnished and thoughtfully equipped as Stratford House was. There’s permit parking outside, and the permit is included with your rental. So, Shakespeare House gets a 9/10 score from us.
Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Review: Osteria Da Gino, Stratford Upon Avon
On our last night, we crossed the road to Osteria Da Gino for an excellent Italian dinner. After insalata di mare for Roy and scallops in a creamy saffron sauce for me, we both had veal. Mine – the veal Da Gino, with a creamy mushroom sauce – was naturally yummier than Roy’s plainer version. Unusually, we had room to share a tiramisu, which, in retrospect, I could greedily have demolished solo. Great service, great atmosphere.
Saturday drive to Sutton
On the Saturday, we went for a drive to Roy’s childhood neighbourhood – Four Oaks, at Sutton Coldfield, north of Birmingham. I think it’s good for the soul to do this sort of thing every decade or so.
Once again, we had lunch at countryside inn The Holly Bush: rather nice salmon fishcakes with a bit of wilted rocket and chips that had gone cold. On the way back, we stopped in the market town of Alcester – where Roy’s mum used to live – and caught the tail-end of a street-food market that Lyndsay had mentioned. I would have had another half of something in the warmth of the summer evening, but that was not to be.
No, I will be the pattern of patience. I will say nothing.”
Shakespeare, King Lear
Family Matters
Otherwise, we were kindly entertained by family. There was a barbecue at Roy’s sister Lyndsay and John’s house at Welford-on-Avon, where we also caught up with his twin nieces, Charlie and Hannah.
… though she be but little, she is fierce.”
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
And, another day, coffee at cousin Kate’s in the impossibly cute village of Upper Slaughter in the Cotswolds, just 35 minutes away down those country lanes that I so love. This idyllic rural existence comes complete with a couple of adorable* wire-haired Daschunds.
*Not necessarily adored by Roy, who has a heart of granite when it comes to canines.
Roy’s birthday
We did look for cake, eventually coming up with a small Dundee cake (39% raisins, £9.99) that fed us for days. (Ten pounds! said Roy – but later had to admit that, calorie for calorie, it had delivered outstanding value.)
Timing our week in Stratford-on-Avon to coincide with Roy’s birthday meant we were able to get the family and friends together for dinner. As his sister Lyndsay and John live in nearby Welford-on-Avon, as does Roy’s childhood friend Marianne and her partner Phil, he’d booked a table at The Bell, well within stumbling distance of their respective homes.
Also present would be: sister Cheryll and Bob; and cousin Kate and John, who live in the not-too-distant Cotswolds.
And we slept over, no doubt after waking the worthy people of Welford as we wove our way back.
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.”
William Shakespeare, Othello
Next up, Part 2 of two weeks in England takes us to Merseyside, East Sussex and London.
Wonderful adventures and evocative travelling moments. So enjoyed the little satirical referrals to Roy’s apparent shortcomings. Enjoy every moment and can’t wait for the second instalment.
Cheers.
Thanks, Miriam! Though, as we all know, Roy is perfection personified. 🙂
[…] which also took us to The Relais Henley the previous week: see Part 1 of Two Weeks in England, here). On the other hand, it would be just a two-hour drive the next day from Bexhill-on-Sea to London, […]