Happy in a Million Ways: This England: Tolkien Trail and Stratford-upon-Avon

Something Emma really wanted to do on our trip to England was to see some J.R.R. Tolkien places. He wrote the Lord of the Rings books, and Emma is a huge fan!

Tolkien's own cover designs for the books... Image from Wikipedia

Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, so that was our destination!

I noticed that our guidebook said, "Driving in Birmingham can be a descent into madness." Let's just say that was an understatement! Downtown Birmingham is INSANE! Never again! (Of course, it was worth the stress for Emma to be able to see everything she wanted to see!)

Ok. So we finally found Moseley Bog, the beginning of the Tolkien Trail. J.R.R. Tolkien explored this forest as a child, and it was the inspiration for one of the forests in the books (I don't know the name of it... hehe).

There were some cray cray trees here. I could imagine them being in some Middle Earth-y forest. :)

Sad croci trying to poke out of the ground.

Next stop on the Tolkien Trail: Sarehole Mill. This was the inspiration for the mill in the Shire in Tolkien's books. :)

We were able to walk to Sarehole Mill, which was a relief!

Next stop on the Trail: Tolkien's actual house!

We liked this sign.

I don't know where we saw this pub, but we loved the penguin peeking out the window!

We made a few more Tolkien stops, then were on our way to Stratford-upon-Avon (about 45 minutes away from Birmingham)!

Just outside of Stratford-upon-Avon, we found St. Peter's Church. The town name was Wooten Wawen. Love it!

St. Peter's Church is very close to William Shakespeare's mother's farm (and only a few miles from Shakepeare's birthplace). It was so cool to think about how Shakespeare probably would have been at this church at some point. Not only that, but the church would have looked pretty much the same then!

I had seen pictures of St. Peter's when reading a blog of someone who walked this area. I remember looking at a photo of the church taken from this same spot. And now I was standing here, in front of this beautiful, 15th century church, taking the same photo. Kind of a surreal moment!

So many of the buildings had this interesting stone on the outside. We noticed it first at Dover Castle.

Gotta check out the graveyard!

This wood is probably older than anything we have in America!

Onto Stratford-upon-Avon! It was much easier to drive here than in Birmingham, and we easily found a parking garage. :)

We opted not to go inside Shakepeare's Birthplace. We kind of figured we've been inside enough period-type houses during other vacations, and they tend to blend together after awhile. Plus, I'm trying to work on letting go of doing things just because I feel like I "should!" :)

Emma and I outside of Shakepeare's digs...

Since we decided not to go inside Shakespeare's Birthplace, we went across the street to have afternoon tea!

My dad e-mailed me while we were in the tea room to see how we were doing. I responded, "To give you an idea of how we're doing, we are sitting across the street from Shakespeare's house, having cream tea and scones with clotted cream and jam. 'I Dreamed a Dream' is playing on the speakers." It was pure delight!

It had turned out to be a beautiful day, so we walked around the streets of Stratford-upon-Avon and took in a few shops!

The Christmas shop...

The Peter Rabbit shop. My mom collects Beatrix Potter figurines, and my nursery as a baby was Peter Rabbit themed. :)

When I went to take a picture of this Noble Fool statue, I saw a Harry Potter shop. So of course, Emma had to hit that up (I won't pretend I don't find that stuff fun, too)!