Shakespeare Pilgrimage - MK to Stratford upon Avon
- ann26154
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
Check out my routes on Komoot https://www.komoot.com/tour/2896442206 https://www.komoot.com/tour/2897780679
Some friends and I had gone to see the the film Hamnet and it inspired me to do a cycling trip over to Stratford upon Avon to visit Anne Hathaway's cottage and the burial place of William Shakespeare. I am a big Shakespeare fan, having seen some amazing theatre performances over the years.
I used cycle.travel which is a great little app for helping you plot cycle friendly routes.
It turned out to be a lovely route cross-country over to Stratford. The weather helped! A chilly wind, but sunshine. Yellow fields of rapeseed as far as you could see, quiet roads through rolling countryside of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. My main comment to anyone wanting to do this route is that the road surface wasn’t that great in parts and there were quite a few potholes on the first half of the ride - so a gravel bike rather than a road bike would probably be more suitable.
The plan was to arrive in time to visit the church where Shakespeare was baptised and buried before its closing time at 3:15. We arrived in plenty of time, but they decided to close the Church early!
Frustrating, however, a drink in a local pub in the sunshine made up for it! Stratford itself a very pretty town along the river Avon.
We were bike packing so an overnight stay and then heading back on a slightly longer route the following day via Banbury.
Of course we had to get the Shakespeare sightseeing in, so cycled over to Anne Hathaway’s cottage which her family have lived in for over 300 years and she lived there until she married Shakespeare at age 26. We then managed to successfully get into the Holy Trinity Church - the reason we made the trip in the first place, to visit William Shakespeare’s grave.
A very pretty route back cross country with a lovely stop at Banbury, famous for Banbury Cross and the nursery rhyme. 180km over the 2 days of cycling and plenty of hills (definitely not flat with over1700m of climbing).
A lovely little cycling adventure, with great friends who indulged my love of Shakespeare.
