Advertisement
Published: October 15th 2013
Edit Blog Post
If we were to travel direct down the M6 this morning we would only have about 70km to drive so as the weather is much improved from the past couple of days we have decided to take a circuitous route west through Shrewsbury and then south through Hereford before cutting back east again to our destination.
We have gone ultra cautious now with breakfast and toast and this morning the position of the smoke alarm right bang in the middle of the room put us off toast altogether and we made do with bread and butter with a spread.
We started off our sightseeing with an hour down town in Stafford where we managed to find another lolly shop to top up our supplies. Stafford started out as a market town and still benefits from a pedestrian mall which makes strolling along and window shopping that much easier.
With the temperature approaching 20C, the warmest we have had since arriving in the UK, just after 11am we headed off on the A53, south west to Shrewsbury.
We weren’t sure what we might find to take a look at in the town but were pleasantly surprised to find
another market town where pedestrians ruled over motor vehicles, as least down town.
The streets of the medieval planned town are haphazard but that what makes them so interesting along with the many half timbered houses and buildings that give a real depth of character to the town.
The longest river in Britain, the Severn, flows through the town and there are a number of walks that you can take beside the river to get about.
After having lunch in the High Street mall we wandered through the town ending up at Shrewsbury Abbey which was founded in the 11
th century and much of the original church is still recognisable today although the building as a whole has been added to over the years. Unfortunately, for us, we arrived when a large party of school children were settling in for lunch and making a hell of a racket which was a bit disappointing as the church would have been a nice place to spend some quiet time admiring the architecture.
Leaving Shrewsbury behind we took the A49 south towards Hereford with the Welsh border hills just a few kilometres away to our right. With the sun
shining and some lovely English countryside to drive through with a number of small towns along the way we had an enjoyable drive in light traffic to Hereford.
Time was starting to get away on us into the afternoon and as we spent a good amount of time in both Stafford and Shrewsbury we felt we couldn’t do justice to any sightseeing in Hereford so turned east towards Evesham.
With a number of options to take we set the GPS for the shortest route which of course gave us a number of country lanes to try out including one that even had a ford to cross, which we reneged at as it seemed more appropriate for the numerous four wheel drives that we noticed on the roads.
Our final destination was going to be about 10km further east of Evesham but first we had some supermarket shopping to do as we have a self catering farm cottage for the next 3 nights.
Getting to the supermarket proved to be a challenge as Evesham also is a market town where the roads through the central part of the town are narrow and this was further complicated by
road works and arriving at the end of the working day when the traffic was heavier .Things though became even more complicated on the way from the supermarket as the road works had seen roads closed and we had a problem sorting out an alternative with Serena as she kept on wanting us to take the road that was closed.
Eventually we overcame that problem and soon cleared the town and heading for the countryside location of Honeybourne.
The farm cottage is one of 4 other accommodations and is a bit of a misnomer as the ‘apartments ‘were all joined together although each had their own private entry. We have everything we need with cooking; space etc and we will be very comfortable here for the next 3 nights while we do some exploring of the Cotswolds.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0477s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
KJ
non-member comment
Biscuits and pottery come to mind!
Interesting for those of us at home downunder to make links of common things with real places in the UK-Shrewsbury biscuits and Staffordshire pottery-did you see either in these 2 places? Almost end of your trip now-just rainy Ireland to go? Hope the Mahoney hunt is successful!