Surprise!

We have headed south westwards today for a couple of days en route to staying with the family in Bath at the weekend.

We are in Ledbury, the blip is taken on the Main Street showing the timbered almshouses and the historic Barrett Browning Memorial clock tower.  Lots of interesting narrow streets and timbered buildings like many places we have visited in Shropshire on our way to Bristol or Bath in the past. But there’s the rub, to my surprise Ledbury, it turns out, is in Herefordshire!

We are having a drink in the beer garden of the Feathers Hotel, very much like the one of the same name we have stayed at in Ludlow which definitely is in Shropshire. It is also very old like the place across the road The Talbot Hotel, where we are staying, which is a late 16th century coaching inn and has an Elizabethan dining room where a skirmish is said to have taken 
place during the Civil War leaving a bullet hole as evidence!

We don’t mind that it is in Herefordshire we were just adding to our collection of Shropshire towns, we thought. Last year we were just up the road in Great Malvern and apart from lovely Ludlow we have stayed in Shrewsbury, Bridgenorth and IronBridge. Perhaps we’ll now start exploring Herefordshire towns. We have previously visited Ross on Wye and Hereford but not stayed.
We took a walk up Church Lane - extra - to look at the church which is unusual as it has a separate bell tower and spire. There are very few in the UK and 7 of them are in Herefordshire. John Masefield the poet was born in Ledbury, there is a plaque in the church naming him and other local poets and apparently A E Houseman, who is a famous son of Ludlow, actually wrote ‘A Shropshire Lad’ here.

We’re sitting in the shade, it’s supposed to start getting hot tomorrow but it’s hot enough for me today!