STRATFORD-UPON-AVON
Shakespeare’s hometown — honestly, it’s like walking into a Shakespearean play.
The Bard himself couldn’t have scripted a more SPECTACULAR setting for his legacy!
Every medieval stone and Tudor beam practically hums with creative electricity. You can feel the inspiration crackling through the air.
The magnificent River Avon flows (okay, after all that insane rain, practically overflowing) like liquid Shakespeare, urging you to stroll along its banks, as if the ghost of the greatest writer who ever lived is still directing the show.
We’d purposely visited because one of Oliver’s incredible students — someone he’s taught for over eight years — was performing at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
Watching them on that stage? A ridiculously proud, heart-swelling, can’t-stop-smiling moment for Oliver!
We visited Shakespeare’s beautifully preserved home, and as we wandered Stratford’s cobbled streets, we stumbled across a touching charity project supporting the “Valley of a Thousand Hills” in KwaZulu-Natal — practically on my doorstep back home in SA — and my heart was literally tugged in every direction.
Post-Christmas dinner (tummies full, thoroughly satisfied, and bodies blissfully lazy), we ambled along the River Avon as far as our legs would carry us, swans gliding by and fairy lights twinkling off the medieval buildings – utterly theatrical and impossibly beautiful.
BTW. We had one of the most INCREDIBLE curries — to my absolute astonishment, it rivalled the authentic Durban flavours of my childhood, right in Shakespeare’s backyard.
With love
Mel x
