Shrewsbury -10 June 2007

While the morning was still cool, we did a walk that passed Haughmond Abbey and skirted round then over Haughmond Hill.

A short distance away was the site of a battle six centuries ago and immortalized by Shakespeare in Henry IV; an excuse for another short walk here, around the battlefield.

By this time the day was getting warm and we had a look around Shrewsbury, a very attractive town built inside the horseshoe shape of the River Severn. It is full of Tudor style buildings.

Our lunch stop was the equally attractive village of Much Wenlock.

Not far away is another town we would recommend: Bridgnorth. It also has a historical High Street, in the middle of which is the Town Hall - open to visitors. They claim to have the best Victorian stained glass windows in the country.

There was another reference to Shakespeare in one set of windows, and we even found New Zealand in a set of windows commemorating Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.

Bridgnorth is made up of two towns: the High town with all the important buildings and the Low Town beside the River Severn. Linking the two is the oldest funicular railway in the country.

The final stop of the day was Dudmaston. This country house has an interesting collection of 20th century modern art, left to the National Trust along with the house by the last owner. The garden is lovely and spacious.

One of the families that previously owned Dudmaston was the Darbys, nicely rounding off the weekend that had started with the Ironbridge where Abraham Darby first used coke to make cast iron.