I drove five minutes up the road to where my phone told me there was a laundromat. A lady took my clothes and said I could pay by card and that I should come back in about 75 minutes. This gave me just about enough time to leisurely drive up, down and around some streets and roads and take some pictures of the battlefields of Tewkesbury, such as they were.
The main battlefield was probably somewhere out here:
Just up the road is where it all ended.
I shot a video:
I noticed that many houses in Tewkesbury had flags outside. I believe these are the banners of the various houses that fought at the battle.
I returned to pick up my clean clothes and paid my debts. My laundry safely tucked away in my suitcase, I set sail for Stratford which I had hoped would be just about empty now, what with everything Shakespeare closed down due to the corona situation. However, when I arrived it was teeming with tourists and a switch turned off in my brain and I decided to fuck off without even stopping.
When I arrived in Leamington Spa, where I was to spend the night, I found a long term parking lot. At first it was full, but I parked and waited and after less than five minutes a space opened up and I could back in.
Even better, the ticket machine bore a sign with the most beautiful sentence in the English language: "Parking charges will recommence in this car park on Saturday August 1, 2020". It was the 24th of July, which meant I could stay overnight for freeeeee.
The joy continued when I got to my hotel, which was in combination with a bar. The guy who checked me in told me he had originally put me in a room at the very top of the building but when he saw all the luggage I was hauling, he put me in a double room on the first floor for the same price. Imma nominate him for sainthood.
Later, on advice from the same man, I went down to a large pub called The Old Library, where I was told to order DRINKS at the bar and go sit down and someone would come and take my order. When 25 minutes had passed I got up and asked if maybe I could order now, but the waitress said they didn't take orders at the table, so I fucked off outta there. Really!
I then asked at the first place if it was ok to order from someplace else but eat in there, since they didn't serve food, and like my first place in Bury, that was no problem at all. So, I popped around the corner to Papa John's and ordered a Charleston (BBQ sauce, pepperoni, beef and pineapple in case you didn't know).
I wasn't sure about the sizes, so I ordered the largest one. I stuffed face for almost an hour but only managed 2/3 of it and donated the rest to some of the… ahem… colorful people around me and was promptly declared a "legend".
I went upstairs to rest and came down a little over 9. I had a very nice conversation about this and that with the woman who was now behind the bar; she was the area manager and was really from Birmingham but was working in Leamington this weekend so the local guy could get a few days off.
I also talked to a young girl from Poland, Paulina and Mark, a guy in his late fifties who told us he'd been born in the area but was now back to visit his parents. A nice conversation with nice people; it doesn't get much better than that.
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