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Published: March 5th 2007
Shrewsbury on the Hill
From the English Bridge...Ice Baby...
Okay, so that's a bizarre title. I'll explain later. My father noted over the weekend that I haven't done much blogging lately. Alarmingly, he's correct and so Jen and I have decided to redouble our efforts to get out more. This entry will take a while, and while I'm starting this in February, it won't be posted until we get back from London in 3 weeks or so having been to Shakespeare.
But anyway, what's on in Oxford? Well, life goes on a little bit and it's clear now that we've settled into something of a routine, which is wholly unhealthy for the working tourist. I was talking to the parentals yesterday and mum noted that every Sunday when I chat to them, plans for the day invariably involve the grocery shopping. Annoyingly, if we had a decent sized fridge and freezer, we probably wouldn't have to do this every Sunday but.....! I'll write another post immediately after this one and attach some photos of our place in which I will wax lyrical on the all consuming subject of terraced housing.
Now, if you want to avoid the boredom, skip this paragraph - I'm going to
The Severn River
and Shewsbury across to the Welsh Marches talk about the weather. Spring has well and truly sprung in Oxford, despite the fact that we're barely a week into March. Astonishing. The trees are in blossom and daffodils are popping up all over the city. However, despite this apparent thaw in the wintery weather and a definite increase in sunny days, when it goes bad, it really goes bad. We've enjoyed a couple of days where the wind would rival Wellington for sheer intensity but it's so so much colder.
So where to now? Well, we did go and see Lenny Henry and he was brilliant. It was a fantastic show, mixed with stand up and impressions - his Jamaican shop keeper and his family is a fantastic gag. Of course I cannot remember a single joke from the show, and even if I could, I suspect it would lose a lot in the retelling. The one line that seems to have stuck was during a stint about the sheer rudeness of chav kids in the cinema he referred to his wife as "Y'know, Dawn French, off the telly!" He was brilliant. Loved it. I intend to return to this theatre in April for a Van Morrison
concert. Not the most exciting, I'll admit, but still, it should be a really good gig.
The start of our new and exciting adventures began with a trip to the Oxford Ice Rink. I've never been ice skating, but I was assured by Jen that there wasn't too much difference with rollerblading. She's not wrong, either, but it's enough to make sure you're concentrating the entire time. Mostly I think it was that ice hurts a lot more than pavement. Don't believe me? Try it. 😊 Sadly there are no photos of me falling down but, well, Jen and I had an average of 2.5 falls each. (Read: I fell over a lot, and she didn't at all!) It had to do with my consistently catching the toothed part at the front of the blade in the ice and face planting. I did manage a full length face-plant which was impressive enough to illicit a scream from a nearby small child. Most excellent. Now you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is an experience I don't want to repeat, but you'd be wrong! It was great fun despite the sore muscles and bruises and crashing. I think we'll go
Shrewsbury Castle Tower
Laura's Tower, apparently. at a more unsociable hour on a weekday instead, probably to a weeknight "ice disco." Like roller disco I'm told, but with more crashing! YAY!
So it's now Monday and we've just come back from a weekend in Shropshire. Shropshire you say? Yes, Shropshire. It's a lovely little county on the border with Wales. The principal city is Shrewsbury (not home to the biscuits, believe it or not as they're called Jammy Dodgers here.....) and it is surrounded by some of the lovliest market towns in England. The city itself is quite lovely, sitting on top of a hill in a bend in the Severn River. It's an old town, famous for being the birthplace of Charles Darwin, still graced with a number of medieval churches, a castle once occupied by Harry 'Hotspur' Percy and an abbey that is still principally Norman.
The castle isn't all that exciting compared to some that we've seen but did offer some pleasant views of the southern part of the city. The Abbey, on the other hand, is magnificent. Made somewhat famous as the home of Ellis Peters' medieval detevcBrother Cadfael medieval mysteries, it was built in 1084 by Roger de Montgomery,
Half Timbered Crazyness
Shrewsbury had more of these than I've ever seen. They were some of the flashest too. a close personal friend of William the Conker, I mean Conquerer, and much of the Norman construction remains integral to the abbey, despite the best efforts of Henry VIII and the Parliamentarians. Perhaps it's most unique feature is that the south nave was demolished by Henry and never rebuilt. However, the chap who sealed up the whole had the good sense to not key in the bricks in the replacement wall, so if anyone wanted to rebuild the nave, the wall would be easy to take down. Of course, this is now completely impossible largely due to the main road that runs right past the abbey!
On our way out to the Hostel in the late afternoon we took up an opportunity to visit Wroxeter, the fourth largest Roman settlement in Britain, build here as part of Hadrian's plan to encourage the local barbarians to adopt a more Roman way of living.
Just up the road was something bizarre though which I really should mention. Wroxeter Roman Vineyard is a real oddity. It's not actually a Roman vineyard, but it does claim to have Roman sheep. Not sure about this one though since my Latin won't stretch to
Shrewsbury Abbey Interior
Norman Arches on the left, Medieval Arches on the right. having a conversation with a sheep. But there was English wine. I'll repeat that. English wine. I'm amazed they can grow grapes here, let alone make wine that was, while not exciting, quite pleasant. So we bought a couple of bottles for the novelty of it. They tasted quite good at the time, I'll let you know how they are in whole glasses eh?!
We spent the night at a YHA about 30 minutes south of Shrewsbury at Wilderhope Manor, a very old National Trust house outside Church Stretton. It was a beautiful gabled Elizabethan Manor house at the base of Wenlock Edge, a large rocky protuberance in Shropshire. Being this close to Wales, Shropshire actually has some hills and is not as annoyingly flat as the rest of England. The house itself dates from 1585 and is reknowned for it's two excellent staircases and some beautiful plasterwork ceilings. It was spoiled slightly for me by the activities of my roommate who will be forever known as Snorri Snoresson from Snorway who kept me awake for much of the night. On the upside, I did get to see a full lunar eclipse as a result, but I'm still tired.
Sunday proved to be somewhat less conducive to outdoor activity (inasmuch as it rained for about....oh....the whole day) so somehow I managed to talk the girls into letting me go to the RAF museum at Cosford. Not sure how I got away with that, but I think that even they enjoyed it, albeit not as much as me. Cosford is a real gem of a place, home to the UK Cold War museum. It's made up of 4 hangars, one of test planes, one of World War II planes, one of Cold War planes and tanks and one of trainers and missiles. The first hangar showed off some of the seriously weird planes that outfits like BAE have come up with over the years, and almost all of which seem to lead directly to the Gloucester Meteor. Odd. The World War II collection had a couple of real gems, the highlights for me being the AVRO Lincoln (successor to the Lancaster, but basically the same plane), a DH Mosquito and the truly stunning Catalina Flying Boat. It was hog heaven really. Then the Cold War exhibit, and the camera was threatening to die! So, I dashed round and took
Wroxeter Roman City
Note Bath House floor on the right and the Basilica Wall on the left. some pictures and then went back and actually read the material. I think the thing that struck me was the size of some of these things. The F111, a long range interdictor, dwarfs the Mosquito, it's nearest WWII equivalent. Even the difference between a Spitfire and a MiG 21 was significant. The best bit of all though were the examples of the V-Series nuclear bombers - the Handley Page Victor and the Avro Vulcan - they were just magnificent. Unbelievably huge - the Vulcan is 31 metres long and has a 34 metre wingspan. Mind you, when you consider the size of the bombs these things were meant to carry, it does make sense. Okay, enough military geekiness. You'll only have to read paragraphs like this once or twice more. Lucky you guys!
We planned to go out to Wales for the afternoon and visit the Alternative Technology Centre at Machynlleth in Snowdonia, but by the time we got to Welshpool in Powys, just across the Welsh border, we realised it would be a really really long drive back. Now this is where it all gets silly. We had lunch in Welshpool about 1:30 in the afternoon and then
Wroxeter Roman City Again
Jennifer being blown around the city. studied the roadmap and nutted out a route that went south through Powys and Monmouthshire, round Gloucester and Cheltenham, across the Cotswalds and into Oxford. In terms of miles travelled, it was about as far as the way we came up - round Birmingham and through Telford.
So it took about 6 hours to get home and I was seriously exhausted by the end of it. But the Welsh countryside, even in the rain, is beautiful. It was something like driving through the Waikato in West Coast weather, but completely different, if that makes sense. We amused ourselves mostly by trying to read the Welsh roadsigns and chuckling quietly about some of the odder words - Heddlu is Welsh for Police and Ysgol is school. We drove through the Brecon Beacons national park, which was quite stunning, very West Coasty. Sadly, since I flattened the camera at Cosford, there aren't any pictures. But we did have the pleasure of visiting lovely little towns like Llandrindod Wells and Ewyas Harold. There are points for correct pronunciation.
Overall we can say that the Welsh countryside is much more interesting because it's not flat as a pancake. I think if the
Wilderhope Manor
Such a cool place to stay. Beautiful house, beautiful surroundings. English knew that Wales and Scotland had all their decent hills, they might be tempted to go and get a few of them back. 😊 It's definitely inspired us to go back to Wales when the weather is better.
And that, ladles and jellyspoons, as they say, is that. We're off to Estonia in a couple of weeks, so I'll have a report and photos for you as soon as we get back. This promises to be an experience and a half, I'm really looking forward to it. I'll probably post something before then, just a quick note to review the local production of Terry Pratchett's "Going Postal" and also (on a-whole-nother level) the Royal Shakespeare's production of the Tempest as well as a few piccies from whatever we get up to while we're in London for that.
Oh, one more thing. I'm pleased that I can tell those of you anxious for us to return approximately when we'll be coming home. Plans at this stage are for a 4th of September flight to Cairo to meet three tours in a row that will take us through Egypt, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Then we'll go to
Wilderhope Manor Stairs
Famous in National Heritage circles, these stairs are. Greece via Cyprus, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, France, Andorra, Spain, Portugal and Morocco before flying back to London for the long haul through Hong Kong to Auckland. Budgets and best guesses put us back in Wellington some time in the middle of January - just in time for the decent bit of the summer.
Take care everyone,
Talk Soon,
Al and Jen
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Matt d
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Oxford Ice Rink
Check out an english league ice hockey game, i'm pretty sure they have a team the "city stars". It's amateur and often all the better for it!!