I grew up in Shakespeare's home town - here's what I know that tourists don't

The red bricks of the waist-high wall are warm to the touch. The sun has been on them for most of the day, blazing down from a cloudless sky. Birds stir after spending the afternoon staying cool in their nests: finches chatter in hedges and swifts wheel high above me.

It's 6pm on a glorious summer evening in England. There's a brief lull in the proceedings of this busy town: the traffic has dissipated, cricket matches have called "stumps" and the many pubs and restaurants are still quiet, waiting for the surge of pre-theatre diners and drinkers.

I'm in Stratford-upon-Avon, the home town of arguably the world's greatest writer and playwright, William Shakespeare. It's also my home town. I left years ago but I have never stopped missing what is both a genial and charismatic place. I return every year, usually in summer, to see old chums, drink pints of local, nutty ale and read a few sonnets to myself, wistfully.

Shakespeare's famous Sonnet 18 begins: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day." He is describing an unnamed young man but could also be writing about our shared home town. Compared to an idyllic summer's day in Stratford-upon-Avon there are, indeed, few things "more lovely and more temperate".

Whether by design or accident, Stratford has become a destination enjoyed equally by those who consider the Bard - in his own words - the "be-all and the end-all" and by those who think he is "much ado about nothing".

Team Shakespeare visitors can tour three theatres plus five properties that shaped his life, including his birthplace and his wife's family home, Anne Hathaway's Cottage. Members of Team Much Ado can row a hired boat alongside white swans on the River Avon and picnic on its grassy banks, hike into the beautiful nearby South Warwickshire and Cotswold Hills countryside, and marvel at the town's well-preserved Elizabethan architecture.

Yes, the wonderfully warped Mason's Court building next to the police station really does date from about 1485, and the oak panels and beams of the White Swan Hotel really have been there for more than 450 years.

My summer evening reverie is broken by a descending peal of bells, courtesy of the ringers at Holy Trinity Church who are beginning their evening practice. I drop into the church to pay my respects at Shakespeare's grave. The plot is at the eastern end of the building and carries a chilling written warning that threatens a curse on anyone who moves his bones.

From the church you can walk along the river through the Avonbank Gardens, where plays are sometimes performed in the open air - Stratford's unofficial fourth stage. The route passes The Other Place theatre and ends at the large two-theatre complex, which includes the Main House and the Swan.

The latter is my favourite. It is a smaller and more intimate theatre, and was created to be more like Shakespeare's famous Globe Theatre in London. I also like it because it is built on the site of former rehearsal rooms. Here - aged 12 and kitted out in full Elizabethan costume - I rehearsed as Falstaff's page Robin in The Merry Wives of Windsor during a stint as a child actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I've never looked as good in tights since.

Back then I was too young to enjoy the sordid delights of the Actors' Pub, which is a theatrical leap or two across the road from the theatre. The real name is the Dirty Duck but the nickname comes from decades of it being frequented by thespians dropping in for a snifter after the show, still vaguely smelling of stage make-up. The walls are decorated with their signed photographs. I can't believe the pub has never asked for mine!

With the sun still blazing away at 8pm I join friends at Cafe Cocktail, a fabulous little bar that broke the pub mould to great acclaim when it opened a few years ago. Expect innovative cocktails and not one with a Shakespearean name.

This is all valuable fuel for my walk home. I am staying in the Shottery neighbourhood, about a half-hour walk west of the town. On this radiant summer evening the last rays of the sun dapple through the bushes. I walk down verdant paths and past thatched-roof cottages, some of which have animals intricately carved along the ridge line of the thatch. There are kissing swans, a fox on the prowl and - I have to look twice - two boxing kangaroos. Clearly some Aussies in town.

The path drops me out near the bend of a road and across it is a familiar sight. This is Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Shakespeare's wife's family home. Pretty much every day of the year the place is overwhelmed with tourists and the huge car park full of coaches.

But now, close to 10pm with the long midsummer dusk still allowing some late light, it's deserted. I peer over the small front gate and get an uninterrupted view of the house, which is way more than a cottage. Parts of the section closest to me date back to 1463 but most was added more than 100 years later. I think the exterior and gardens are the house's best features and I'm getting a private after-hours viewing.

A late blackbird does a final flypast of the garden and the last bees buzz away to wherever bees go to sleep. I buzz off too, almost directly over the road to my Airbnb to "sleep, perchance to dream".