Warwick is well-placed for short excursions. Stratford-upon-Avon, eight miles south, pairs naturally with the castle for a single day of Tudor and medieval England — Shakespeare's birthplace and a couple of his other houses make a manageable afternoon. Leamington Spa, immediately east and effectively the same town in practical terms, has the Regency architecture and the Pump Rooms gardens that Warwick lacks. Coventry, twenty minutes north by car, has the ruined medieval cathedral side-by-side with Basil Spence's defiant modernist replacement.