It was biting cold and drizzling as we bumped our bags along Oxford’s cobbled streets towards the railway station. We had left our apartment early and arrived with plenty of time to warm up before boarding our train to Shrewsbury. Then things went awry. I won’t go into details but, as we dragged our bags hopefully across the bridge spanning the railway platforms, our train departed without us, and couldn’t have cared less! We dragged our bags back to the ticket office where I purchased another round of train tickets and we arrived in Shrewsbury exactly one hour later than we had scheduled and about 76 pounds lighter. (That is British Pounds; about AUD $154.)
Our accomodation in Shrewsbury was a bit of a walk from the station and we eventally arrived having dragged our bags about 1.5 km “up hill and down dale”. Despite the unfortunate progress of the day thus far we parked our bags and went out to explore Shrewsbury in the middle of the afternoon.
The town centre is contained within an almost complete circular arc of the River Severn with nine bridges spanning the river around the arc. A beautiful park faces the arcing river and we strolled along the river bank enjoying wonderful floral gardens. A section of the park used to be a quarry and has now been transformed into an enclosed flower wonderland that is locked up after hours. It is called The Dingle and was filled with brightly flowering and fragrant plants. The Shrewsbury Horticultural Society is an active association and the town is littered with flowering pots of colour adding very much to the overall charm and beauty of this place.
Wow, it looks absolutely beautiful!
Does England have Uber yet? I reckon the best part of travelling (as opposed to being the tourist) IS the getting yourself where you wanna be and then maybe not ending up where you expected. What joy in discovery!
PS John is in London at the moment!
CB