After going to Shakespeare’s Birthplace, my husband and I went to see Shakespeare’s New Place and Shakespeare’s Grave. For the Birthplace, the New Place and Hall’s Croft a special ticket can be bought that will cover all three attractions, at the moment is just shy of £17 for adults.
Shakespeare’s New Place is the house he bought a few years after he got married, in 1597. He bought the house from William Underhill. Underhill was poisoned two months later by his son, who was hanged for the murder. All the property he owned were confiscated by the crown. It’s quite a strange story.
A couple of years after he bought the house, The Globe theatre is built in London. In 1601 his father died and he inherited the house he was born in. Only two years after that, Queen Elizabeth I dies and she is succeeded by King James VI and I. In 1607, Susanna Shakespeare, his eldest child, marries Dr. Hall. Their house is the third property I mentioned at the beginning.
An year later, in 1608, Shakespeare’s mother dies. In 1609 his Sonnets are published. William Shakespeare dies at New Place in 1616, aged 52.
I was excited to receive these two Varta Power Banks to try. I had a no-name Power Bank and I found it hard to use, it took such a long time to charge the phone. I had high expectations from Varta and the products turned out to be even better that I hoped it would be.
My husband and I went to Stratford upon Avon in our holiday. We’ve been there before, just to see the city, in an evening. So, this time, we went after lunch time, to make sure we have time to see Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Shakespeare’s New place, his grave and Hall’s Croft.
Shakespeare’s Birthplace is one of the 5 attractions in Stratford upon Avon that are part of Shakespeare’s past. For our visit, we’ve started with Shakespeare’s Birthplace. As it’s obvious from its name, this is the house where William Shakespeare was born. He grew up in this house with his parents and siblings. After he got married in 1582, the first 5 years he lived here with his wife Anne Hathaway. In 1583 William had his first child, Susanna and after 2 years they had twins.
His father worked in this house for 50 years. He married Mary Arden in 1557 and they had 8 children. William was the third, born in 1564. In 1568 John, William’s father, became the Mayor and William was in a privileged position, being able to go to the local grammar school for his education. The school was established by King Edward VI. His futher died in 1601 and William inherited the house as the eldest surviving child.
William leased part of the property and it became an inn called the Maidenhead, later being The Swan and Maidenhead. The inn was open until 1847. The house passed to Susanna, William’s daughter and after that to Elizabeth, his granddaughter. As Elizabeth had no children, after her death, the house was inherited by a descendant of one of William’s sisters. They had the house until 1847, when the house went up for sale and was bought by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. I think it’s amazing that the house was in Shakespeare’s family until bought by the trust.
Before seeing the house, we passed by a museum with artifacts, a history of the house and clips. One of the artifacts on display is this First Folio. Its full title is Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies and it was the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s work, published in 1623. Without it, a lot of Shakespeare’s plays would have been lost.
There were between 750 and 1000 copies hand-printed. The price for it in 1623 would have been £1 if bound and 15 shillings unbound. A school teacher at that time earned £20 a year. Only 230 First Folios have survived.
At the end of June we’ve celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary, that was the most important thing that happened last month. Besides this, we had a packed month with 3 wonderful events and a short holiday. I will talk about them a bit further in the post.
For our anniversary, I’ve created the cake we wanted for our wedding, decorated with fondant rose petals. At our wedding there was a mix up and the decor wasn’t what we were looking for, still nice, but different. As for the flavour, I made it foret noire, a little different than the chocolate cake we actually had.
I like how the cake looked and it was delicious too. I think the roses are perfect considering it’s the first time I use this cutter for roses. Last time I made them free hand and now they look much better as my technique improved. I can’t wait to make more roses and more fondant shapes for cakes. I find it relaxing.
Another fab thing I did last week was to go to Flywheel Festival at Bicester Heritage*. Bicester Heritage is the UK’s only centre for historic motoring excellence. It was founded in 2013 on the site of a derelict RAF base, that was marked at risk in 2008. It has 19 listed buildings and 11 areas of Scheduled Ancient Monuments. Now there are over 30 specialist businesses based at Bicester, making it the largest centre in the industry.
The first recorded flight here was in 1911, way before becoming an RAF base. So I don’t think there could be a better location for the Flywheel Festival.
The Flywheel Festival was great, both my husband and I had a wonderful time. It took me a while to pick only a “few” pictures for this post, as I had almost 500 to choose from. I also made a 8 minutes clip with highlights of the day.
The last flying display we saw was a dogfight between a Spitfire and a Buchon Messerschmitt. Both planes were piloted by two champions of Red Bull Air Race, Paul Bonhomme and Steve Jones. When I heard the commentator saying that I was ecstatic. I watch Red Bull Air Race (RBAR) and I know them from the races. If you are not familiar with RBAR, search online, I’m sure you will find it fascinating.
The commentator said we should search on youtube two clips: Two Planes Fly Through a Hangar – Red Bull Barnstorming (same team as the one at Flywheel: Paul Bonhomme and Steve Jones) and Spitfire under bridge. Both clips are amazing, do search for them.
At the Festival there was a marque filled with vintage items. They all looked so nice. I was tempted to buy some props for my food blog.
Of course, there were lots of stands with all sort of interesting things like model cars and planes, army style clothing. Lots of things for children too.
In the Live Music Marque we listened to a few songs by The Candy Girls, a vintage style harmony trio. They are singing songs from the 30s up until the 60s. I really enjoyed it even though it’s not the kind of music I usually listen to. In the clip is a part of one of their songs.
The flying displays were great too. I enjoyed all of them. They were flying in close formation at times and the commentator was telling us interesting facts about them, like when they were used, if it’s the real plane or a replica.
One of the two helicopters in the Sioux/Scout helicopter pair flying display.
Besides the airplane field, there were some army style stands with old items from the wars. It was really nice to have a look at them. The ones mending the stalls were dressed in vintage army costumes. It was lovely. I also liked the soldiers, showing a glimpse of how it was like in the old days.
Every Festival has food stalls and this vintage tea room was lovely, very popular. Huge queue of people wanting to have a delicious cream tea. The crockery was vintage and they were different. It looked really nice.
There were other food stands, but, unfortunately, not many vegetarian options for us. Other people were having a picnic and that was lovely too.
Among other attractions were pedal powered planes for children, very cute and fun for kids. There was also a Motorcycle Wall of Death, the thing where they are driving a motorcycle in circles on the wall. Sorry, but I can’t explain it better.
At one end of the field there were the tank rides. That is something really different, I haven’t seen them before. They were very popular too with lots of people queuing.
Tiger 9 Aeronautical Display Team. It was very impressive.
In the Great War Display Team flying display there were planes from the First World War, most of them replicas if I remember correctly. It was an amazing flying display with sounds and fake bombs. I can’t imagine how it would have been in real war.
This is an 1931 Invicta S-Type.
It might look old, but this car is just 1 year old, made in 2016. Atalanta Motors made only 22 cars in late 1930s, all with different specifications. The new cars are built to order, hand crafted from scratch, all British made. The company is based at Bicester Heritage.
A 1901 Toledo Steam Car, isn’t it fantastic?
The last car I’m sharing is the 1914 Fafnir Hall-Scott Special.
Last week I’ve been to a blogging event organized by Bridgestone at Chateau Impney, a stunning hotel, as you can see in the picture below. The gardens are so beautiful, I had to take a couple of pictures there.
Bridgestone is a brand I know from F1 when they were supplying Ferrari. I was a Schumacher fan for a long time, since I’ve started watching the races a few years ago (19 to be more precise, gosh, that sounds like a lot). Bridgestone is the largest company of tyres and rubber products worldwide. It was established in 1931 in Japan. Today it has 13 manufacturing plants and offices in 35 countries; that is impressive.
The event was focused on a run flat tyre called DriveGuard. This tyre will allow you to drive for at least another 50 miles at 50mph, while giving the same comfort and performance in wet conditions as any other premium tyre. I think that is fantastic. It doesn’t matter where the damage is done, even if it’s on the sidewalls. It can be fitted on most cars with TPMS (tyre pressure monitoring system). The tyre is fully recyclable at the end of its life.
According to their website, Nature in Art Museum is the world’s first museum and art gallery dedicated to fine, decorative and applied art inspired by nature. I had to visit this museum as I love nature in art. The museum is small, but filled with wonderful paintings, ceramics and sculptures. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the museum, but I took some pictures outside, in the beautiful gardens.
Nature in Art Museum is housed in Wallsworth Hall, an 18th century Georgian mansion. The architecture of the building is beautiful. From the 1740s and until 1987 when it was bought by Nature in Art Trust the building has an interesting history, you can read about it here.
