Stratford-upon-Avon walking tours
 

One of my guidebooks recommends the walking tour guided by Jonathan Milton on Thursdays and Saturdays. This sounded interesting to me and I wondered if any of you have personal knowledge of his tours. I know there are also daily walking tours by another company. And the bus tours...

I don't think the walking tours go all the way out to Anne Hathaway's cottage - so not sure how to accomplish that. Maybe take a bus afterward? Any advice appreciated -

Actually I e-mailed Mr. Milton and he no longer does the tour on Thursdays - Saturdays only now... so that narrows my options a bit.

The hop-on-hop-off bus tour in Stratford is the easiest way to get to Anne Hathaway's Cottage and Mary Arden's house (which is actually the more interesting of the two - though not quite so "chocolate box pretty")

You can ride it all over and get off where ever you want and then jump back on for a bit more of the tour. And while Stratford itself is pretty compact, it is a bit of a hike to get to all the sites from the Birthplace to the theatres to St Mary's where he is buried.

The walking tour is probably good, but if you also want to see the 2 out of town houses, consider the Guide Friday hop-on-hop-off

Oh - I was typing while you were posting - too bad about the tours. But it is possible there are other walking tours if that is what you want. You can check w/ the TIC in Stratford.

The Tourist Information Centre can help with details of guided walking tours.
Anne Hathaway's Cottage is less than a mile from the centre of Stratford and makes a pleasant walk across Shottery Fields (probably the route young William would have taken to court the fair Anne!)
Take the signposted footpath from Evesham Place between the houses and across the fields to Shottery.

Mary Arden's House is about 3 miles from Stratford town centre and the Guide Friday bus (hop on, hop off) is your best means of getting there.

Shakespeare was buried in Holy Trinity- unless he's been moved!!! LOL

The 'Shakespeare properties' - a big hoax? His birthplace - doubts exist whether he was ever lived in it. Another property in town is a neighbor's house after the Shakepeare-linked house was torn down eons ago for not paying taxes and is now a garden. A lot of hype to rake in tourist pounds IMO.

Even who the Bard really was is up for great debate.

I'm not sure about this so-called hype. As nobody spent time writing masses of contemporary information about Shakespeare while he grew up in Stratford and certainly couldn't predict the great poet he turned out to be then we have to rely on limited evidence to piece together Shakespeare's life. Limited records do give us an idea that the house in Henley Street was probably his father's (the fine for the unorthorised dung heap, for starters) and he was baptised and buried in Holy Trinity Church. Nash's House is clearly marked as his grandaughter's husband's house and the foundations next door are of Shakespeare's final home. There is no con about it.
On the other hand it is open to debate as to where he married Ann Hathaway and if he was truly educated at the town's grammar school and, of course, there was the issue of the wrong house being attributed to Mary Arden until a few years ago!!

Well i shouldn't be so harsh - I really love Stratford the town today - very pretty setting, well worth a visit sans Spearshakes.

But if you go to the Globe Theatre Exhibition in London they mince little words in their displays explaining how it's very improbably that the man we know as Shakespeare and is associated with the Shakespeare properties actually could have written such plays - especially with all the classical references for a person who was basically uneducated, which at that time was a preserve of the wealthy. So that's what i base my feelings on the subject.

The properties are dubious at best that they are really related to the person who really was the scribe and even questionable in case of being related to the man we call the Bard of Avon i believe.

I lament the closure of the stockyards by the train station - that lended a weird atmosphere to this bastion of culture!

oops - of course. I'm always typing St Mary's (Warwick) when talking about Stratford/Warwick and just sort of went into auto pilot. :)

The unlikely event of meeting a plesiosaur doesn't stop folk visiting Loch Ness.
Mind you, I know what you mean about the Globe Theatre Exhibition, rooms full of detail about Shakespeare's life and what London was like in the early 17th century, re-creations, model panoramas and videos then just as you exit a final signboard giving the arguement that Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere could have written these works!!