We don’t know many details about Shakespeare’s daily life. Oddly, we do know where he was, and what he was doing, exactly four hundred years ago to the day today: he was in Stratford-on-Avon, just a half-dozen miles east of where I am now, finalising his will.
I didn’t go through Stratford, or visit any of the honeypot Shakespearean attractions, but he would have known the landscape through which I walked today, just north and west of Stratford. The Forest of Arden that he mentions in some of the plays no longer exists, except in small thickets. The fields and the landscape, however, cannot have changed that much from the countryside he would have known as a boy, and to which he retired to live late in his life.
For me, geography and history enrich one another: places are more interesting for knowing the times and events they have seen, and history is more tangible when standing where it happened. I suppose that is one reason why I chose the Via Francigena for a long walk. There is, perhaps, no other walk in Europe with such a rich historical context.
Route: Henley in Arden to Broom via Heart of England Way. Terrain: rolling farmland and small woods; mostly field paths. Weather: sunny and warm, clouding over later. Daily distance: 19.9 km/12.3 miles. Cumulative distance: 356.0 km/220.7 miles. Accommodation: Broom Hall Inn, Broom.
Come Wind, Come Weather 
That’s funny we’ve just been to Brougham hall [ it’s pronounced ‘Broom’] It’s near Ullswater
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