Signed photographs of Royal Shakespeare Company actors line the walls of the Dirty Duck, and after a performance at the theatre next door some of them come in for a pint. The pub is officially the Black Swan, but nobody calls it that; the nickname is said to have arrived with American GIs during the war, and it stuck. It sits on the river, with a terrace over the Avon and a rear garden about as big as the pub itself. The house ale is called the Mucky Mallard. Dogs get treats and toys, and one Tripadvisor visitor summed the place up as "great and dog friendly."
There is no shortage of alternatives within a short walk. The Garrick Inn, a timber-framed building with origins in the 1400s, keeps low beams and open fires and a cellar CAMRA takes seriously; it is named after David Garrick, the eighteenth-century actor. The Bear first opened its doors in 1662 and has river views and a run of cask ales. The Rose & Crown dates to 1596. For serious drinkers there is the Stratford Alehouse, a micropub pouring constantly rotating barrels straight from the cask.
Food shopping is unusually good for a town this size. The Farm at Stratford-upon-Avon spreads across nine acres, with a food hall, a chocolatier, a butcher, a restaurant, a cookery school, a kitchen garden and actual farm animals. It stocks bread, honey, farmhouse cheese, fresh fish and preserves from local producers, and The Times named it one of the thirty best farm shops in Britain. Hilliers is the town butcher; Pownalls, at the garden centre, does English cheeses, pâtés and dips; and a farmers' market sets up twice a month.
You will end up on the river whether you plan to or not. Bancroft Gardens runs along the bank in front of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, where boats go out toward Evesham and you can hire your own. The medieval Clopton Bridge still carries traffic across the water. For a longer stretch, the Stratford Greenway follows five surfaced miles of disused railway toward Long Marston, level enough for wheelchairs and bikes, and the Avon Valley footpath heads out to Welford-on-Avon with good birdwatching along the way.
The Church of the Holy Trinity holds Shakespeare's grave. His ledger stone and memorial survive in the chancel, alongside his wife Anne, his daughter Susanna and his son-in-law Dr John Hall; a small contribution lets you see them. The fabric spans four centuries and keeps its fifteenth-century misericords and traces of medieval wall painting. Nearby, Harvard House was built in 1596 by Thomas Rogers, whose grandson John Harvard gave his name to the university across the Atlantic.
The Domesday surveyors found twenty-nine households here in 1086, the manor belonging to the Bishop of Worcester, and valued it at twenty-five pounds a year.
Trains run about hourly to Birmingham Snow Hill, with Chiltern services toward Warwick, Leamington and London Marylebone; the A46 and M40 do the rest. On the Recreation Ground children can practise cycling on a miniature street complete with a mini-roundabout, pedestrian crossings and working traffic lights.