Stratford makes a grand opener for Warwickshire’s showreel of medieval forests, Tudor houses and civil war battlefields
Arriving in Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden, Celia in As You Like It declares: “I like this place. And willingly could waste my time in it.” For a slow travel escape, Warwickshire is sometimes overshadowed by the neighbouring Cotswolds and Oxfordshire. But culturally, historically, geographically, it is Shakespeare’s homeland and England’s ancient heart. From Marylebone station, the train to Leamington Spa powers through the Chilterns in just under 90 minutes. Sheep-freckled farms slope up to grassy hill forts under circling red kites, and a fox runs through fields among white splashes of blackthorn blossom. The branch line for Stratford-upon-Avon signals a shift of tempo: Claverdon, Bearley, Wilmcote… the station names have an Elizabethan air.
By lunchtime I’m climbing the Welcombe Hills, following part of the 625-mile Monarch’s Way, a long-distance footpath tracing the route of King Charles II as he fled Cromwell’s forces after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Eleven miles of the route, heading north out of Stratford, will bring me to the village of Wootton Wawen, with its regular trains and buses. I reach an apple orchard and buy a bottle of pressed juice. Lunch, soon after, is garden salad and gooey treacle tart at The Farm. The Monarch’s Way runs right past this popular shop and cafe, through fields of baby goats and highland cows, colourful plots of spring veg and a Gloucestershire Old Spot churning up a paddock ready for this summer’s sunflowers. The afternoon miles pass quicker. In Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Autolycus the peddler first arrives on stage singing a song about “the sweet of the year”, full of budding daffodils and tumbling in the hay, and exits with a verse about walking: Jog on, jog on, the footpath way / And merrily hent the stile-a / A merry heart goes all the day / Your sad tires in a mile-a.