Shropshire

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Shropshire. Sunday 24 June 2018

Today we drove from Oxfordshire to Shropshire, only a couple of hours at the most of actual driving, but we spent a lot of time on the way. Just outside Worcester (where the sauce comes from) we stopped at the Elgar birthplace museum. A great little museum, under the auspices of the National Trust, with a large quantity of actual artefacts and documents of the composer. I tend to go to many of these musical museums and this was one of the best. It gave a real insight into the life and times of the composer as well as having a well set up small cottage of the times and a glorious English cottage garden. The volunteers here have an obvious passion. There was also a chap doing Penny Farthing demos in the carpark. Don’t miss Alison’s pictures on her Facebook page.

Our accommodation is a self-catering apartment set in the steep hilly countryside of Shropshire. Driving in will take some getting used to. The road is only slightly wider than our little Citroen and there are few passing places. Still within walking distance to a local pub (called bizarrely The Kangaroo), which we tested this evening before tea. All of our stays so far have been really good. There is just so much choice around now with good quality accommodation. The user review systems ensure that there are few nasty surprises.

Monday.

Another walking day. Shropshire has a few famous walks and the Stiperstones is one of them. These stones are rocky outcrops right on the top of a long ridge. They are visible from afar. The climb up from the carpark was not too steep and once up on the ridge the outcrops themselves tower over you. The panoramic view across both sides was well worth the climb. We walked about 6 miles of fairly slow going as the path was very stony and potentially treacherous if you did not constantly watch your step.

Lead has been mined and smelted in the valleys here since Roman times and in the early industrial period The Bog valley was described as the valley of desolation. Today there are few signs of this former wasted landscape. It is now picturesque sheep and cattle grazing country.

After lunch we tried to tackle a little of Offa’s dyke path. Offa was a king in around 800 AD that had a very long ditch and mound wall built close to the current English – Welsh border, presumably in an attempt to keep the Welsh out. There is a long distance walking path that follows Offa’s Dyke and we tried to follow a part of this track in the afternoon. We meandered along the beautiful Wye river valley for a while but then the path climbed out of the valley and the very steep hills convinced us that we had done enough for the day.

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