Ludlow, Shropshire

The other evening there was a program on BBC2 TV about the town of Ludlow. It’s a lovely little town in South Shropshire about twelve miles from where we live. Every Wednesday there is a market in the square in front of the castle entrance. Ludlow also has a Tesco supermarket across the street from the train station.

Susan likes to buy her lunch from a woman she has gotten to know who has a stall in the market. So on Wednesdays we drive up to Ludlow to go to the market and do the weekly shopping at the Tesco. From there we drive a couple of miles out of town to the Ludlow Food Centre, a very good butcher and deli. It makes a nice day out and sometimes we stop for lunch and a drink at either the Charlton Arms Hotel by the river or the Church Inn, a super pub near the square.

There are only two drawbacks in this otherwise very pleasant day. The first is the illegal parking, mostly by delivery vans that jams up the traffic and makes a mess of the streets. The second problem derives from the peculiar habit of English people, especially English tourists, to walk in the middle of the street. In Ludlow some of the streets are quite narrow as you would expect in an old town like this, but there are pedestrian sidewalks provided on every street. Still there are almost always people strolling down the middle of these streets where the cars are meant to be.

I tend to shout a lot.