My Shropshire Adventure: Day Two (21 May)

To a city girl, and a Canadian city girl at that, Edna and John's house is something else, all brick and wooden beams, slanted floors, solid wooden doors with metal latches, and doorways and ceilings made for someone just my height! Oh and the garden is absolutely amazing too--but more photos of the house and garden will come tomorrow. For now, here's a view from the garden looking toward the back of the house: The house has an "older" part and a "newer" part. To put this into a bit of perspective, here's the date that marks the older part:
Our first destination for the day was Stokesay Castle. Although called a castle, both Jonathan and the Stokesay audio guide pointed out that it is in fact a fortified manor house, rather than a castle proper. Regardless, the thirteenth-century building was spectacular. The building consists of a north tower, a central hall, and a south tower.
The interior of the hall was impressive,
as was the seventeenth-century gatehouse just opposite.
As I wandered through the various levels of the castle, I peeked into the adjacent church graveyard next door
and dodged the birds who constantly flew in and out of windows, doors, and cracks in the building.
The interior was lovely

and the views from the top of the south tower were wonderful as well.

Here's a better view of the gatehouse from the top of the south tower,
and a look at the countryside just beyond the castle car-park.
One of my favourite parts of our visit was the moat walk,
a lovely stroll in what used to be the moat, now a serene garden space.

We also visited the parish church before we left. Here's a view of the castle and gatehouse from the church grounds.
From Stokesay, we drove to Ludlow, a beautiful market town of 10,000 people. With castle ruins, restaurants galore, and an almost unchanged layout of medieval streets,
the town was a pleasure to wander. Jonathan pointed out the incredible Feathers Hotel, considered to be one of the finest Jacobean buildings in the country. I thought the Harry Potter/ Tesco rant on this bookshop door was worth a photo: We had a brilliant lunch at an outside table in this quiet cul-de-sac packed with places for tempting food and drink
before continuing our wandering through the market, which happened to be on today.
These eggs were beautiful in colour
and Jonathan read out one of these cheese adverts in his best booming voice . . . can you guess which one was deemed worthy of such treatment?
Even in our short time in Ludlow, the number of small passageways and charming streets quickly became obvious.
Our last stop in town was St. Laurence's Parish Church,
which was very impressive. I was especially struck by the wooden ceiling, which Jonathan said was typical of country churches.

By now it was late afternoon, and we had to decide whether to visit another market town, called Much Wenlock, or take a scenic drive on Long Mynd. (Love those names!) Lisa and Jonathan asked me what I wanted to do, but I said that they were the experts here and should pick what they thought would be best. After much discussion, and taking into account the time (which would mean that Much Wenlock would be winding down for the day) and Bronwen's need to nap, they chose Long Mynd and I'm glad they did--it's one of the most spectacular drives I've ever done. Long Mynd, or "long mountain," is part of the Shropshire Hills, a designated "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty." Long Mynd is a breathtaking open ridge with a landscape of mountain pastures and rich valleys, and on this spring day, it was also well-dotted with grazing sheep and hopping (oh yes, they really do hop!) lambs.







I told tour-guide Jonathan that I would leave Shropshire happy if I just had one good photo each of a sheep, pheasant, and rabbit (all wildlife that I had been told were abundant in the area), and with this next photo, I accomplished the first on my list. The drive down Long Mynd really emphasized the steepness of the descent and back on level land, I laughed at the questionable functionality of this set of street signs.
When we returned home, Bronwen was happy to get out of the car and have a good crawl in the garden. Since the early evening air was quite cool, she wore a cute new poncho, which looked good, but hindered her crawling at times. There were even a few instances when her rapid crawling and the poncho's length caused her to end up face-down on the lawn! Poor Bronwen--already sacrificing practicality for beauty. ;-)
After a wonderful supper prepared by Edna, which I have to admit was spring lamb (yes, I spent the day ooohing and aaahing at their cuteness and then ate one for supper and Jonathan's baaaah-ing during the meal didn't help), we decided to walk off some of our supper by climbing the village's eponymous hill, Grinshill. A reminder of our proximity to the Welsh border was evident in this billingual sign, which I got Jonathan to read out to me:
This dog kept a mindful watch over his house
and we had a look inside this church, which was open but empty.
The sundial in the church graveyard kept perfect time
and this display by the entrance seemed worth a photo somehow.
As we made our way up the hill, we found we were fighting the setting sun. Lisa was mindful of this, and thought we should hurry, but Jonathan and I were sure we'd be fine. (In the end, Lisa was right, and it got so dark on the trails canopied by trees that I had to walk behind Lisa, using her light-coloured trousers as my only guide as to where to step.) Part of the reason that we got caught in the dark was the spectacular view from the top of Grinshill:
We had fun picking out individual houses at the base of the hillbefore scampering down in the twilight.