The history’s in the shopping when you take a tour of Rugby, England, with Angela Thody

Sport, history, fashion and lifestyle shopping. Disparate family interests can be difficult to combine but touring Rugby does just that. It’s a satisfying half-term day outing (assuming your offspring attend rival schools).

Start at Rugby’s Art Gallery and Museum on Little Elborow Street. It’s an unexpected gem of a municipal museum, with a glass acreage to take advantage of its site and offer you glimpses of Rugby as you proceed upwards to its top galleries.

Amidst changing exhibitions of the avant garde and joyously incomprehensible, is a museum in the making. Rugby’s citizens have donated their memorabilia, curated into local history themes. It’s glorious eclecticism where everyone can say ‘Ah yes, I remember it well’.

The museum also takes advantage of Rugby’s adjacent Roman settlement at Tripontium. There are the usual young people-friendly displays on Roman life but each is underpinned by drawers of artefacts for a more adult viewpoint.

Next, collect Rugby’s ‘Pathway of Fame’ guide from the Visitor Centre on the museum’s ground floor. The Rugby football fans in your party can then follow the game’s every nuance by seeking the pavement plaques around town. You follow the historic shops on the same route.

Number one plaque (on the museum’s forecourt) celebrates he who started it all, William Webb Ellis. He who won 52 caps for it, Johnny Wilkinson, merits the next plaque (1a). Encourage the sports fanatics to race ahead to plaque 2 celebrating the first rules of the game on High Street. (along pedestianised Wooll Street and Duke’s Jetty, across Sheep Street and straight on) Once there, turn right down High Street toward Rugby School’s Gateway.

Nonchalently suggest a try at a coffee stop and you’ll touch down at Summersault on your right. This is an Edwardian terracotta masterpiece so stand back to admire the frontage before entering. Then relax amidst the preserved shopfittings of the Boots’s chemist’s shop that it used to be.

While you conclude your coffee in peace, anchor fidgety members of your party with the famous lumberjack cake and then safely send them out to forage for Martin Johnson and earlier heroes on the plaque trail. They’re all near the school’s entrance.

Meanwhile, sit in the front window and satisfy your inner historian. Gazing right, the chrenellations of Rugby School Opposite spot the retail conversions from a Victorian terrace, a 1930s’ brick with signature metal framed windows, 1920s’ brick and stone and imitative Georgian. And one of them houses Gilbert’s Rugby shop.

From your coffee stop, walk left up High Street. Observe the old town hall in the upper reaches of Marks and Spencer on your right. At the edge of the Market Place, on your left, is old established Peter Bray shoe store with store front to match.

Just beyond, in Chapel Street, the fourteenth century oldest shop in Rugby nestles on your left as high fashion emporium, Terracotta. Where once Tew the butcher shaped his joints, now find Jackpot, InWear, Hoss and Sandwich to shape yours. Non-shoppers can seek Will Carling’s plaque near-by.

Now for the glories of Regent Street. From the Market Place head right in front of the nineteenth century St Andrew’s church. Its pulpit is high Victorian abundance in restraint. Directly opposite, Regent Street begins.

Developed in 1900-1910, it is one of Rugby’s few unchanged streets. Human scale, local shops abound, each with differing upper stories. It’s a cacophony of McKintosh style windows. Voyseyian bays, skeletal glass facades and a grand fob watch shop sign crowned with an orb to advertise the original jewellers below.

Down below, those pavement plaques celebrate internationalism as Welsh, French, Italian and South African heroes dominate. Down below for shoppers, peruse Abaxas homeware style, nVhers fashion from Naf Naf, Hobbes and Fenwright or detour right into Bank Street for Niki Lu’s shoes (Padders, Ecco, Geox, Dorndorf). The street terminates in a graceful triangle of grass with its Rupert Brooke statue.

Return to the Museum again. Before collecting your car, walk past and beside the museum down the narrow Bloxham Place. Ahead is the famous statue of Webb Ellis himself with the ball on hold. Immediately right is the Webb Ellis shop with the Rugby Football Museum within.

And in its forecourt? Plaque 47 for the first Women’s Rugby World Cup, 1991 (won by England’s women in 2000 though the men took until 2003 for their World Cup).

Two choices on the way home:
• South on the A426 and a brief stop in the pretty village of Dunchurch with its mid-range dress shop on the Green.
• North on the A426, spot the inland sea island with the boats, Faith, Hope and Charity, becalmed with flowers. Entertain your half-termers with ten pin bowling or the cinema, both on the retail park (open to 2000 so you can take in some high street staples too). Back on the A426, wave farewell at Rugby’s boundary where Mr Kipling’s sponsored and tonsured traffic island sports its horticultural cakes.

TRAVEL TIPS
• Art Gallery and Museum, Tues, Thurs 100-1800; Weds Fris, 1000-1700, Sats 1000-1600, Suns 1200-1600. Free. visitor.centre@rugby.gov.uk Chapel Street car park adjacent accessed from the ring road, Corporation Street.
• Summersaults, 0900-1630 (shop til 1730), Fridays til 2100.
• St Andrews; recitals most Tuesdays, 1300.
• Rugby Football Museum, 0900-1700 except Sundays. Free.

Heading to Cyprus?
Don’t confine your explorations to just the coastal and mountain temptations of beaches, archaeology, golf and natural history. Follow this guide for a day in Cyprus’s capital city combining fashionable shopping, sight-seeing and eating. And it’s all designed for a walk in the gentle sunshine. Collect your free map at the airport tourist bureau when you arrive.

Lefkosia (Nicosia)
Expect a city of contrasts. An elegant dress shop nudges a semi-defunct electricals shop; a pet shop nestles a high-end interior design emporium. Antiquity museums are presided over by a giant stone Archbishop Makarios III. Cafés you might scorn at home produce wonderful food in squeaky clean surroundings.

Start your day at the Plateia Elepherias entrance to the old walled city. Buses drop off near by or there´s parking in the lee of the stone mediaeval bastions. Contemplate your chances of scaling their heights had you led an army there!

Straight ahead is the famous pedestrianised Lidres Street. Ignore it for now. Instead branch right into Onasagorou Street. A very short distance, just past its Ippokratus Street junction, you’re in the dress fabric district.

Three shops there offer you the choices you thought had disappeared as London’s Liberty’s and John Lewis’s downsized their fabric departments. French lace, German jerseys, British worsteds, combine with the shops’ expert advice. Kattis (33A) and Michaelides (69-71) both offer excellent guidance in English but Hapsides (37-39) was just as expert in mime. In the same area, are several smaller shops where you can rummage for fabric bargains in piled displays.

Take magazine pictures of outfits you want and the shops will estimate your needs. They’ll recommend dressmakers if you´re staying a few weeks (or you’ll also find them in your holiday towns).

Cyprus is good for men’s and women’s tailoring too. Some shops promise a 2-3 days. suit completion but why rush it? Give the tailor a chance to demonstrate bespoke elegance. With several fittings and longer discussion about your style, you’ll look like Saville Row but the price won’t.

Continue your stroll a short distance further along Onasagorou Street. It becomes Mouson Street. And there soars Phaneromeni Church (in 28th October Square). Slide in for a moment. Settle in the armed chairs a world away from British pews. Absorb the wall of intense gold icons, children being lifted to kiss them and then stumbling to copy Mummy’s sign of the cross.

At the side of the church, is Mattheos traditional Cypriot coffee house. Be entertained by the owners’ caged birds, their cacti display and their washing line with your coffee indulgence. Sitting outside or in, you can watch a catwalk of tourist fashion as a continuous stream of visitors pause to photograph the church.

Now, it’s choice time.
• For repeat tourists, retrace your steps to a right turn onto Lykqurgou Street. Just before its junction with Lidras, admire the almost hidden folk costume shop (Orphanos). Return again to Onasagorou. Take third left onto Ippokratus and there’s the unexpected gem of the Leventis Municipal Museum (not to be confused with the identical Sewage Works Department next door!). Walk on a glass floor over excavations, sink into the Chronology Wall which cleverly wraps around you to reveal what other civilisations were up to as we raised the stones of Stonehenge. See folk costume import changes as successive empires affected Cyprus (no prizes for guessing to which Empire is owed the silver-service afternoon tea scene).
• For newcomers, it has to be the ghost town of the buffer zone dividing Cyprus. Proceed along Socrates Street (and admire the recent excavations) to the top of Lidras. Peer through the holes in the wall at the ghostly area of the ‘Green Line’. Then turn back along Lidras and peer over the whole town from the observatory atop Ermes Department Store.

Both old and new visitors can reconvene in the Laiki Geitonia traditional pedestrianised maze of narrow lanes conglomerated with souvenir shops. Reasonable lunch stops abound too but this can be the moment to quit old town for new.

Drive out along Leoforus Evagorou from the Plateia Elepherias. Two minutes and just past the Stadium on your right, turn left onto Andrea Dimitriou and park anywhere on your right. And there is your very own archaeological site. Wander at will or sit on the bench to dream yourself right back to indeterminate time (ten minutes walk from the walled city if you don´t want to re-park your car). And just below is the designer outlet store Vvs1.

Having satisfied the inner tourist, head for very nearby Stasikratous Street. Seek lunch here or on the close and parallel main avenue of Archbishop Makarios III. Plenty of modern pavement cafes of all cuisines here and in the side streets (including one situated outside the windows of English émigré Marks and Spencer).

As Nicosia’s shops reawaken from leisurely lunches, leave those of your party who are under 30 in age (and with bust and hip measurements to match) amidst the Archbishop’s Avenue shops and return to Stasikratous. It’s a mix of high-end imported designer wear and individualised shopping with some local input.

At its north-west end, turn left onto Themistokli Dervi. Its junction with Florinis Street marks ‘grandma bait’ babies’ and children’s wear shops. Or head right along Themistokli to Leoforus Evagorou for mid-range ladies’ and men’s wear and shoes.

Finally, share an early evening Cypriot meze or buffet meal (Macedonia’s or Estiades on Prevezis within easy walking distance), so avoiding the rush hour and enjoying the later opening shops.

Alternatively, leaving Nicosia along its main artery to the south (the upper reaches of Archbishop Makarios Avenue), first take a right along Leoforus Santaroza for top patisseries, La Parfaite and Ariston (on your left as the road becomes Leoforus Georgiou Griva Digeni).

Return to Makarios Avenue. Pull into any side street and walk back to the Avenue. You’ll discover more reasonably priced fashion shops with Italian German ranges (Tuzzi, Apriori and Rabe) and interior design for window shopping.

TRAVEL TIPS
• Collect the excellent free Nicosia maps and guides (and for all Cypriot cities) from the airport tourist offices when you arrive, or in any visitor centre on the island.
• Municipal Museum, 1000-1630 Tues-Sat.
• Observatory on Lidras: 11th floor, Shacolas Tower, accessible from within Ermés store or from adjacent Arsinois Street, Mon-Sat, 0930-1700
• Shop hours are around 1000-1830
• La Parfaite opens Mon-Sun
• Don’t drive in rush hours starting 1430 and 1715.
• Avoid weekends (crowded shops and closed museums)
• Nicosia’s tourist information is in Laiki Geitonia well disguised in a maze of streets but follow the brown signs.