(3 of 7)
A 13-mile drive south leads to Warwick and its castle, one of Europe's best-preserved medieval fortresses. The venturesome wayfarer might try the Zetland Arms Pub below St. Mary's Church, with clean rooms and the best breakfast in town for $11 a guest. Less than ten miles south is Stratford-on-Avon. Will Shakespeare is remembered shabbily in a lot of curio shoppes, but magnificently upheld by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Stratford Hilton (yes, Ophelia, there is a Stratford Hilton) and the Shakespeare charge about $65 a night for two. However, a room costs an unbelievable $12 at the Strathedon, and $15 at the Falstaff, noted for its robust meals.
On the loop back to London, the Mini practically drives itself through the lush hills and yellow stone villages of the Cotswolds. From Chipping Norton, one can espy an extraordinary edifice, half-castle, half-factory, called the Bliss tweed mill. Bliss it is: the 1872 mill weaves woolen fabrics for some of the world's great tailors and will sell them to the passer-by for about $10 a yard.
Another enticement out of London is the Stonehenge Spin, which not only takes in the great megalithic monument but leads also to Bath and Salisbury. The trip is best made by train.
An hour or so through the placid West Country from London, Bath in its heyday was the unofficial second capital of England, where royalty, bucks and dandies gambled, flirted and soaked in the mildly radioactive waters that gave the town its name. The springs (120° F) still gush a quarter of a million gallons a day as they did for the Romans, and for Richard ("Beau") Nash who came to Bath in 1705 and inspired the construction of its great Palladian crescents and squares of honeygold sandstone. Richard Brindsley Sheridan eloped from 11 Royal Crescent with Elizabeth Linley, whose family later employed a servant girl who was to become the scandalous Lady Hamilton, Horatio Nelson's lover; he lived here too.
Britain's only American museum is in Bath. The city's music and drama festival, from May 18 to June 3, is devoted mostly to baroque composers, but moderns like Janacek and Stravinsky are also performed. A small, comfortable hotel is the Richmond, near the Venetian-style three-arch Pulteney bridge across the Avon (double room with bath, about $30).
A slow train back from Bath stops at Salisbury (pronounced Sawlsbry), whose 13th century gothic cathedral boasts the tallest spire in Britain (404 ft.); it tilts 291/2 in. to the southwest. The cathedral houses the best-preserved of only four original copies of the Magna Carta, and the country's oldest working clock, which first tolled time around 1386.
The jolliest lodgings in the British Isles can be bed-and-breakfast in private homes. Reservations can be made through tourist information centers in most cities; a double room averages $20.
SCOTLAND. Short of spending an entire vacation in Scotland, the Strategic Traveler can take a fast train north to the Highlands for several days of fishing, hunting, golfing, sightseeing and walking on the moors. The braw, bonny Scots pride themselves on their victuals: venison and wild game of all sorts, salmon, trout, mackerel and Aberdeen Angus beef, which they seem to cook better than the Sassenachs can in the south.