Shropshire Weekend

Saturday 5 - 6 July approx. 4 miles  
Hilary, Tracey, Jane + Carol

Saturday 5 July
A walk in the beautiful Shropshire Hills

It rained heavily on Friday so we weren't sure what to expect, so we were lucky to have such good weather. 

After our drive into Shropshire we started at the Bog car park. We visited the toilet and checked out the crafts for sale and the cakes for later.

The instructions for the walk were not very easy to follow so of course we went the wrong way.

We climbed up to the Stiperstone ridge.  We followed the Shropshire Way and went down a hill and sat and had our lunch. We could hear plenty of birds whilst we sat on the grass. We saw a raven sitting on the top of a tree.

Then a group D of E girls came up the hill out of the woods looking hot and bothered in the heat with the large bags on their backs, we did not envy them.

We continued down the hill to a lane, crossed the road and went over the stile and down a further hill. It didn't quite seem right especially as we were supposed to be going towards a farmhouse, so we returned to the lane to try and work out where we should be going. Tracey and I tried to find another path amongst the nettles but we couldn't find one. Fortunately two people and two dogs came over the stile, they became our saving angels as we were able to work out from the map that we had gone in the wrong direction!

We walked back up the hill. The quartzite was very sparkly. As we were walking into the sun we didn't notice how shiny the rocks were until we had the sun behind us.

We decided to walk up to the Cranberry Rocks - sat taking in the beautiful view. There were a couple of caterpillars on the path about 10 cm long.
Had tea and cake at The Bog, the young girl serving us was not up to speed and didn't keep up with our orders so we had to repeat them. Then when we sat outside our orders came in three or four batches as the order was wrong, also there was not enough milk for four having tea so we had to ask for more! Tracey bought a bracelet and Carol two tea towels.

Saturday night is not a good time to find somewhere to eat in Shrewsbury - we tried a number of places either they were full or we were going to have to wait an hour. We ate at the A Hole in the Wall - we just managed to order food in time as they stop serving food at 8pm. and then start the disco, so the music was VERY loud whilst we were eating our meal.
We had a wander around the town. Hilary wanted to show us Tanners.

At the Lion and Pheasant we stopped for tea and hot chocolate, a boutique hotel with a mix of the old and the new.

Sunday 6 July
We walked from the hotel along the river to the park. We had a drink at the swimming pool cafe. We decided we had better walk back, but noticed a gap in the hedge and when we went through it there were beautiful planted beds with hundreds and hundreds of plants in them.