We took advantage of our English Heritage membership to pay a quick visit to Kenilworth Castle. It was too hot to spend too long wandering around so we'll have to re-visit later in the year, on a cooler day.

We also had a quick walk around Kenilworth itself, and passed the new Waitrose, which were were told opens on thursday.

The English Heritage Festival of History covers 2000 years of British history. Most of the displays are military, probably because it leads to a more dramatic show.

In addition to the big displays, there was a historic market where you could buy traditional clothing, games, tableware.

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First stop: The Domestic Fowl Trust. We went there earlier this year but Emma wanted to go back and feed the animals again. This backfired when we got to the Rhea, which decided it wanted to eat her finger and didn't want to let go.

We stopped at a nearby 13th century thatched pub for lunch.

We drove into Evesham and went around the Almonry museum and garden. It was larger than we were expecting on the inside, and it took a couple of hours to walk around.

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We went to a hamster show in Alcester today. I took a short break during the day to walk around the town. It looks like a nice historic place, with plenty of old buildings.

We went with 3 hamsters - Orna and Graaf were being entered in the show. Vande came along to keep Graaf company. We came home with 4 hamsters. Emma decided to buy a 'boyfriend' for Orna.

Earlier this year, a sculpture was erected in the middle of a roundabout in Stratford-upon-Avon. It depicts an armillary, which apparently is some kind of ancient astronomical tool.

For some reason, this has sent the residents of Stratford into an apoplexy, with people shouting abuse at it and holding a protest at the site.

For Christ's sake, it's only a sculpture. It's not obscene or pornographic or anything which should warrant such vitriol. The worst it could do is liven up a dull roundabout. Get a sense of perspective. If that's the worst thing happening in Stratford at the moment, then you are a very lucky town indeed. Otherwise, you are all a sad bunch of bastards and you should get a life.

After a week of terrible weather and almost constant rain, we decided that if it was decent at the weekend we would go out somewhere. We chose two more National Trust houses.

First, Upton House. The house itself was a bit disappointing, being more like an art gallery than a residence. You didn't really get a feel for what it would have been like to live there. The grounds were better, the gardens were quite extensive and well landscaped with terraces and lakes.

The second house was Farnbrough Hall. The house was smaller but is still lived in so it's only open for a few days each week. The grounds were quite hilly so there was plenty of good exercise to be found walking to the end to view the Obilisk, along with various other buildings and follies along the way. We also saw a deer in the woodland walk - it bounded off as soon as it spotted us.  

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It wasn't the ideal day to be stuck in a hot car with the windows wound up. It was very warm and having the blower on full didn't cool the car down much - air conditioning would have been so welcome. Thankfully we only had to do this whilst in the 'dangerous animal' enclosures, we could have the windows open everywhere else.

There are no monkeys at this park so we thought we'd be safe from animals wanting to wreck the car. We didn't expect a zebra to try to eat the wing mirror. Thankfully it didn't do any damage.

When looking at animals starts to wear a bit thin, there's the fun fair with assorted rides, roller coasters and the crappiest slowest dodgems I've ever been on.

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(most of the images are taken from video rather than photographs, so the pictures may be slightly fuzzy)

It was a stroke of luck that we chose to go to Stratford during the Shakespeare birthday celebrations. We were only in town for a few hours and what we saw was slightly disappointing. There was country dancing and morris dancing in the road outside the Birthplace. There was also a parade through the town in the afternoon which consisted of a few bands and people wearing suits with a small number of people in period costume.

Our main reason for going was to visit the Shakespeare Houses, 5 properties in and around the town with various connections to the man. We started off at the Birthplace and finished at Mary Arden's House (which was possibly the most interesting, being the largest of the attractions with two houses and various farm buildings to visit).

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We decided to use our new National Trust memberships to visit a couple of nearby properties - Packwood House and Baddesley Clinton, both only a few miles from each other. We had a bit of a walk around each of the houses and parts of the grounds but it was a bit too cold to be spending much time outside.

Packwood House has interesting grounds, having an over-abundance of sundials and a Yew garden set out like the Sermon on the Mount. Baddesley Clinton House is slightly more unusual, set in a moat where we fed our sandwich crusts to the ducks.

The place is described by the National Trust as a Superb Tudor house and landscaped deer park. I had a couple of days off work so we decided to go along and take a look. It's a bit early in the season and not all of the buildings were open but we spent an interesting couple of hours there.

Despite being a fairly sunny day, it was quite cold especially in the shade. It should be better in the summer - not only would it be warmer but there would be leaves on the trees so it would look better too.

We decided to join the National Trust while we were there. Emma had already decided to join because she gets the cheaper 'young persons' price. I decided to join because they had a voucher for discount membership. This means we'll get free entry to any of their other sites in the UK. Hopefully this will help us to

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Essentially a pub crawl around the Black Country, by bus. The trip was organised by someone from work and most of the people there were either employees or friends of employees. The bus was half an hour late because they had to double back to avoid a low bridge. This meant we only had 10 minutes at the first pub (The Forge in Halesowen) but we were allowed to take our drinks onto the bus as long as we poured them into a plastic 'glass' first.

It was very difficult drinking on the bus, mainly due to the bumpiness of the ride. Despite that, the on board bar seemed to do good business. The next pub was the Dry Dock, in Dudley. Notable for having a bar made out of an old canal boat. The third pub was the Blue Brick, then last of all The Pie Factory in Tipton.

It was a good night out and a good way of seeing other parts of the midlands.

Update: A number of people have contacted me asking for details about booking the beer bus. Their website is www.blackcountrytours.co.uk.

I've lived in Coventry for over a year now, but still hadn't visited Stratford. We'd decided to wait til after summer so the town wasn't too crowded.

I didn't know what to expect when we got there. Someone in work told me that the town had an awful one-way system (which proved to be true. When the roads are busy, it made finding a car park slightly confusing). I'd read that the town wasn't as historic as people are led to believe and that it had a horrible modern shopping centre. The town actually has a lot of old timber buildings (many more that Warwick) and the concrete shopping centre is small and easy to avoid.

What the town does have of course, is an abundance of Shakespeare. Not just obvious things like his birthplace, but 'ye olde shoppes' with awful names. Within a few minutes of leaving the car park, we passed such delights as:

• Much Ado about Toys
• As You Like It (a sandwich bar)
• The Food of Love (a cafe)

There were a lot of sweet shops in the town, advertising various types of traditional or hand-made produce. We popped into a few of them, the first time to buy some fudge. Then later on to get some ice-cream. I also bought a bar of spiced chocolate, containing cinnamon and chilli. The chilli gives it a slight warmth, rather than firey heat.