Blogs from Shropshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

We had planned visiting Wroxeter Roman City, one of the English Heritage sites on 22 May. Mark suggested buying snacks before going there, as there wouldn’t be any shops in the little village. We had read through the English Heritage guidebook and said that Wroxeter Roman City does not have the picnic tables. I therefore suggested visiting Shrewsbury Abbey in the morning, have lunch along the riverside walk, and go to Wroxeter in the afternoon. Shrewsbury Abbey is one of the most distinctive historic buildings in Shrewsbury. It was originally found in 1083, and it was the setting of the famous Cadfael novels written by Ells Peters. Like all of the abbeys in the UK, much of the original structural buildings together with furnishing and treasures dating before the Dissolution, i.e. 1540 have disappeared. Nevertheless, the ... read more

We caught the No.96 bus from Shrewsbury Abbey. Wroxeter Roman City wasn’t far from Attingham Park, which we visited a few years ago. The bus drove past there on the way to Wroxeter village. The bus driver kindly stopped at the bus stop and gave us the direction to Wroxeter Roman City. We showed our English Heritage Membership cards and were offered audio guides. Wroxeter Roman City contained the impressive remains of a Roman bath house in the middle of the countryside. As soon as we set foot on the site, a sizeable freestanding masonry wall came into our sight. We firstly walked on the site of the Basilica where the people would wait for their turn for bathing, and approached the big masonry wall, i.e. the Old Work of the original south wall of the ... read more

We are having the best time catching up with friends in Shropshire. It is amazing how quickly the seven year gap has just faded away. Conversations appear to begin as they left off and the laughter seems to arrive just as freely as it always did. As one person put it; “it’s as if you just went out to get milk”. Well, seven years to get a pint of milk might be stretching it a bit but it is a comfortable and familiar environment to be back in. So far so good with the car – we certainly like it and I can only recommend Peugeot Eurolease NZ. They took all the hard work and made the process very easy and the Peugeot 308 is nice to drive. It took a bit of getting used to ... read more

Well, Saturday was an excellent training day where we managed to get three of our 5 riders together for a 40+ miler around the Shropshire countryside. We started at Tenbury Wells at 10:30 and headed to Ludlow, about 10 miles over lovely rolling English countryside. Lots of short steep hills! Very good Interval training :-) From Ludlow, we then headed West up Whitcliffe Road, which is a lovely long hill climb (separates the men from the boys), then descended into the next valley before heading to Leintwardine. In Leintwardine we stopped for lunch at the Sun Inn and received an excellent welcome from the staff and locals. If anyone is ever in the area, I would recommend a stop there. The local ales were excellent and the Venison burgers were to die for, as were the ... read more

And now to something different . We had visited a few castles and felt like something with a twist to it. "How about a Spitfire or a Vulcan or a Hurricane?" Himself said. The biggest problem was distance as we didnt want to go too far and needed a day trip to satisfy our desire for airplanes. Google came to the rescue and we found what we were looking for at the RAF Museum at Cosford in Shropshire. Not to far to travel we set off setting our sat nav to one of the two postcodes given.The first postcode TF denoted the Telford area and the other one WV Wolverhampton. Arriving at the TF postcode we found ourselves in a cul de sac on a local estate without any sign of the airfield nor the museum ... read more