Like every other person living in England, Ben and I took advantage of the bank holiday long weekend at the end of May.
We were headed to Oxfordshire, from the promised showers in the Northwest to some more forecast showers in the South. Hooray for England!
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We drove (well, Ben drove while I sang along to Taylors Tortured Poets album) down through Birmingham towards our accommodation destination Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Right on the edge of the Cotswolds.
But first we stopped in at Stratford-Upon-Avon, famously the hometown of Shakespeare. Ahhh Shakespeare. The big man. The Bard of Avon. Willy, as he was known to his friends, or so I presume. Look, when all is said and done it’s a 450-year-old house preserved on a modern street, but you can’t help feeling awed by it. It’s the equivalent of seeing castle ruins or a crumbling Abbey. You’re standing in a busy town square, people milling about and suddenly you can imagine it as it once might have been. People roaming the streets of the small market town, William Shakespeare wandering about, overhearing snippets of conversation that may have inspired some of the most famous works of literature of all time. And then you blink, and you return to the tourist laden cobblestone streets where people are snapping photos of the sign for Shakespeare’s house. No, not the house itself, just the sign.
Then we saw Oxford.
It’s the same tingly feeling that works its way through your body, thinking of the brilliance that has walked the halls of each building. This time, though, there was a sprinkle of jealousy at the people who get to be a part of it now. Whatever, who wants to go there anyway… (me… I do).
When planning this mini getaway, I likened each outing to after dinner treat time. You know the time I’m talking about? You set down two cups of tea you and you pull out a ginger nut biscuit, clearly the best bit of the tea experience. You set each biscuit down next to a cup of tea, ‘one for you,’ you say, ‘and one for me.’ Shakespeare was my ginger nut, and it was delicious. Ben was wonderfully polite as we wandered through the town but when we stopped to tour the Royal Shakespeare Company, I watched his eyes glaze over. I almost felt bad for him until we walked into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
There’s no other way to put it… I absolutely nailed it. I handed him that ginger nut on a silver platter. He tore off to inspect more clay pots from Roman times and preserved mummies from Ancient Egypt. He was gluttonous for each exhibit, and we walked away feeling immensely satisfied.
*The Ashmolean Museum was Britain’s first public museum, founded in 1683. If you’re ever in Oxford, it would be a crime to miss it. And it’s free!
Briefly we stopped in on a little place called Burton-on-the-Water. If I’m being honest, I don’t quite know how to best describe it. Perhaps quaint or picturesque, although those words feel completely underwhelming. The same goes for the Costwolds which is filled with life and colour that just doesn’t seem real. I’m extremely jealous of the likes of Jeremy Clarkson who gets to drive around the farmland in his fast, expensive cars.
Which brings me to the final part of our trip, The Diddly Squat Farm shop experience. Now for those of you who don’t watch Clarkson’s Farm on Prime, here’s some quick context. Jeremy Clarkson, former Top Gear presenter and the UK’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2024 (no word of a lie) hosts a TV show about life on his farm, Diddly Squat, in the Cotswolds. And when the opportunity arose for us to visit the famous farm shop, we couldn’t dismiss it. We arrived at 9:30am when it first opened, and I thought I was being clever. Turns out a lot of people were cleverer than I. The line to get into the farm shop was 2 hours long at 9:34. Ben and I saw the wait time sign and promptly walked back to the car. A disappointing but necessary choice and let’s be real, Clarkson doesn’t need any of our hard-earned GBP’s.
So, we packed it in and drove home. Back up through Birmingham to sunny Manchester that was not so sunny. It was torrential when we got home but who cares? We had somehow avoided any rain throughout the weekend and had driven and wandered through gorgeous countryside under blue skies and warm rays.
What more could you ask for? Apart from a jar of Jeremy Clarkson’s Bee Juice.
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