July 28 Three March towns

Ludlow, Leominster and Hereford.  I had hoped to go to Brecon as well but due to the Black Mountains getting in the way that looked like too long a drive.  Looking  back, as will be evident from today's report that view was spot on the money.

The rain stopped sometime during the night and I had a good nights kip.  When I woke I decided to watch the BBC News and was just in time to cop the Sports news.  This started off with a track meet where Jessica Ennis (if you can remember who she is I suspect you're English) finished the race.  She got interviewed extensively, while Sally Pearson (if you can remember who she is I suspect you're Australian) who won, didn't even get shown crossing the line.  Usain Bolt (you don't have to be Jamaican to know who he is) running in a relay race got less coverage that Sir Bradley Wiggins did for finishing in the peleton in the first stage of the tour of Poland (run in Italy for goodness sake).

They then moved on to the weather.  Some places on the East Coast had scored 3” overnight, .  The forecast for the rest of the week sounded typical of an English Summer: sunny spells with scattered thundery showers.  (I've just realised this is my first reference to the weather, a remarkable outcome from spending a week in the UK.  This probably reflects it being beautiful weather all the time we were in Selsey.)

The basic plan today was to go down to Hereford about 25 miles (ie 40 km) South, check that out and comeback North calling in at Leominster, Berrington Hall and Ludlow en route.  That is pretty much what happened.  Again putting in a parenthesis, I will offer a few comments about the official view of driving in the UK:

• there are many, many signs about speed cameras.  Possibly 25% of these seem to be associated with actual cameras, the rest are just propaganda.  However I take note of them and drop to the speed limit unlike other folk who scream past.  Today we went past a camera and the guy who had just overtaken me must have been doing at least 10mph over the limit, but he didn't even brake. 
• That caused me to think of stats from our last visit that >50% of speeding fines, license withdrawals are ignored.
• There are a lot of other signs exhorting one to slow down (for an intersection, a crest, a case of indigestion).  Obviously they have never read the story of the boy who called wolf!
• At one point today I was doing 50, overtaking someone doing 35 in an unlimited area, when a sign flashed “Slow Down”at me as they had an advisory (I think) 40 limit for an upcoming bend.  Distracting garbage!

 We started by looking at the old church in Tugford.

A simple building but with some charms.  I noted that they had deliberately only mowed half the graveyard allowing the remainder to be 'natural'.  A few cemetery trusts in Australia could learn from this. The main war memorials are in that thematic page, but this manuscript appealed . 

So did these old fertility symbols: only 2 others known in Shropshire!

We basically hammered down the road to Hereford, and into the free TESCO parking lot, to get to the cathedral before the 11am Matins.   This was obviously a well known ploy as they had started business with a Eucharist at 10am.  The singing was quite good so at 10:15 we sat in the pew until we realised at about 10:30, on page 3 of 9 in the Order of Service, that this was going to be a long service so wandered off.  Like many towns in the area Hereford was well served with planter boxes.

We started with the museum where a roman pavement was mounted on the wall

and spoke to some folk who gave us a small, but very useful, map and told us how to get to the River Wye and pointed out that en route we'd pass the site of Nell Gwynn's house.  The plaque their made no reference to her involvement in the citrus trade, nor who sired the first Duke of St Albans. 

We crossed the River Wye and reconnected with Edward Elgar due to an episode - in some way incorporated in the Enigma Variations - with a friend's bulldog jumping in the River. 

Some Mute swans were sunning themselves on the banks of the Wye,

Back to the Cathedral and quickly in between the Eucharist finishing at about 11:15 and Matins kicking off at 11:30.  An excellent cathedral – not quite up to Worcester standards but with much good glass

The second image is of the "Thomas Denny Windows".  The artist responsible for this appears to have started his career in glass more or less by accident in 1983 and now has windows in 30+ churches across the UK.   There were also many interesting memorials sampled in the appropriate post.

After this we wandered around Hereford finding several interesting items.  I have restricted my burden on your download limit to this, reflecting the origin of my favourite breed of beef in this County.

Back to Leominster where there seemed to be two specially interesting buildings according to the guidebook.  In fact it was a bit better than that with a good mural 

titled "The Friendship Tree" painted by Sally Johnson and Mike Johnson..   The Priory Church was interesting for having a Norman/Romanesque old bit and a later addition heading towards a Perpendicular/Gothic feel.  A service was just finishing but a nice lady still welcomed us (while her male colleague turned off all the lights)!  Here is an image.

The other officially interesting building was the Guildhall.  The image would reflect the level of  interest better if the gardener's truck wasn't in the way (but they were working on a Sunday so lets not be too hard on them).

Then to the NT's Berrington Hall. 

A very interesting building with park grounds in which Capability Brown had been involved: towards the end of our visit I inspected the haha  (which by definition is invisible from the house but is indicated by the faint line on this side of the foreground tuft of grass).

Looking at the depth of this effort I decided that the Pratchett character “Bloody Stupid Johnstone” (whose hahas killed many people by excessive depth) was not a great deal away from the reality of the better known Mr Brown. 

On the next stretch of the drive I noticed my first dead badger of the trip.  I presume it was a road fatality not part of the cull being taken to reduce a claimed TB situation.  On the last trip the roads around Bristol had basically been surfaced with dead badgers but they have been less evident this trip (so far).  

Ludlow then got looked at and rated as a very nice town.  

The Church of St Lawrence was mind-boggling, especially when 'only' a Parish Church.  I have no objection to the view of the church architecture person who described it as the Cathedral of the Marches.

There were many very interesting war memorials in this church and they are all ....  I will also show this sample of the workings of a carillion (of interest to me because I had never realised how they worked in the past).

Then, tired but happy, we wandered home, attempting to buy some stuff from the Ludlow Brewery but no-one was interested in serving me.

Tonight's beer was BV Stout from Mayfields Brewery in Herefordshire.  A good stout even if named after Black Vaughn who seems to have been a very naughty boy in 1469 (and later, when his ghost wreaked havoc).  It did a good job of settling my digestion down before asking it to deal with an excellent pork pie, courtesy of – wait for it – Tescoes.

Bird of the Day: Nuthatch seen at Tugford

Building of the day: St Lawrence Church in Ludlow but Hereford Cathedral had put in a big effort in the final quarter and only missed out narrowly.

Garden of the Day:  Walled garden at Berrington Hall

Bad taste of the Day:  poor service at the Ludlow Brewery

View of the Day:  The parkland at Berrigton.

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