Rambles in Shropshire

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 6 (Supplement)

Rambles in Shropshire

Special to the New Zealand Herald by K.K

r PHE trip from Neen Sollars—tho -*• nearest station to Mamble—to Chester was most delightful, and full of unexpected thrills. Mamble itself is a village that closed its eyes some hundred years ago after a famous crusader fought a duel behind tho village pub at daybreak in his slippers, opened them again when John Drinkwater wrote a poem about it, and since then has slept soundly. Neen Sollars is much the same, but it at least has tho honour ot possessing a railway station, in ohaigo of a porter, who has not tho faintest idea what time trains run, or if they run at all. When asked for time-tables he rings "Charley," or "George, for information, which ho invariably muddles on the way from tho telephone. The only way to get from Neen with any degree of surety is to catch a bus five miles away, or sit all day on the railway line. So we caught the bus five miles away, walking through the twisted Shropshire lanes, on the first stage ot our journey to Ludlow. We were clad lightly for this English summer, wearing merely thick woollen costumes &n(l no overcoats! Ludlow has the ruins of a lovely old castle. Nettles are growing where the moat used to be, and the winds whistle through what used to be. grand old banqueting halls. Instead ot laughter and ribaldry and roaring fires, there is now crumbling stone. arC ii board notices tacked on the walls tell what parts used to bo bedrooms, kitchens chapels and prisons; grasses are growing in the big fireplaces, and where the floors and ceilings of upper stories have disappeared wallflowers are flourishing. , We went all through the castle and then down among the old half-timbered houses that lean together in the streets. The town is not built with any plan; narrow streets and wide ones, streets that go round and back again, and blind ones running to the castle wall are all a part of Ludlow. It has some lovely old cottages, so low that a tall

Pilgrimage to Mary Webb s Grave

man could not stand upright in them, and both Shropshire and Worcestershire are full of black and white houses as pretty as pictures. We caught a bus for Shrewsbury from the market square. It was nine o'clock when we arrived, and we were hungry. Beautifully old and carefully disguised new hotels offered us dinners which would have satisfied our taste if we could have met their demands, but wo decided to look for something cheaper, for dinner, bed and breakfast. Wo found the dinner at a tiny shop under a huge staircase, run by the most timid Christian maiden in England. The room was just big enough for two small tables, four wicker chairs, some copper wanning pans, frj'ing-pans, and a furry black kitten. He wouldn't eat ham, or eggs, or chipped potatoes, for we tried him with all three; but he did eat a piece of my leg, the end of my tie, scratched a bit out of my finger, and all but pulled the cloth off the table. Strengthened bv the excellent ham and eggs, we went in search of a bed. At 10.30 in a strange town one's respec-