Oh No! Not another hill!

On the Saturday before I left South Shropshire, as it was another day off, I decided to go to the nearby town/village of Clun. They were having their annual Open Gardens weekend and also the little town museum was open in the morning. The museum was quite fascinating as it had a lot of old artefacts from various rural craftsmen including a collection of the tools of their trade and old smocks, etc. It also had a lot of relics found at the various Iron Age and Neolithic sites around the area. There were a tremendous number of flint tools and, as the custodian pointed out, flints don't occur in this part of the country at all and probably had to be brought in from the east coast! Whilst I was there I purchased for the princely sum of £1 a booklet entitled Heritage Trail which took you on a walk around Clun detailing places of interest. The starting point was the ruin of Clun Castle and then I meandered around the streets looking at old tanneries, temperance hotels and mills. In the end, I combined both the trail and visiting the open gardens and had a truly wonderful day, stopping off for a cream tea at one of the farmhouses and chatting to all the various garden owners, who were all really friendly.

On the Sunday, I repacked the car and realised that I had a tiny bit of spare space, so I asked if I might buy one of the Shetland sheep fleeces as they were so lovely and soft, but Christine wouldn't hear of it and insisted I just helped myself. I chose a really pretty blue-grey fleece and hope one day to be able to spin it into a fine yarn. It's really nice to be able to take a little part of the places with me when I leave, especially as I feel that I have been leaving little bits of my heart behind in several of the places I have visited.

I arrived in North Shropshire late on Sunday afternoon and drove slowly along very narrow but thankfully deserted rural lanes further and further into the depths of the countryside. I was carefully following the directions that I had been sent so I knew I wasn't lost but I did wonder where I was going to end up! Eventually I entered a steep-sided valley and drove past a small lake and then I was there. The cottage is set in three acres of garden and woodland and it's all set on an angle of about 45 degrees up behind the house! I'm beginning to think I should have gone to East Anglia!

The couple who own it are about my age and have only been here for about three years. Before they bought it, the cottage had belonged to an elderly couple who had been there for thirty years. In that time they had turned the garden from a steep, bracken clothed hillside into a beautiful garden on several levels with interconneting pathways and steps. Unfortunately, as they aged the garden got beyond them and it is now like a mini Lost Gardens of Heligan. I still haven't seen all of the areas, but at every level there are the most beautiful specimen trees and shrubs all sadly over-matured and in need of some drastic action, even to taking out some of the ones that have got completely overcrowded. It must have been fantastic in it's heyday and will be again, I'm sure if Dawn and Tony keep working as hard as they do at the moment.

I try to split my hours equally between work in the vegetable garden (Tony's main domain) and the other areas (Dawn's pride and joy) and feel as if I have already made a difference. The trouble is, I get so absorbed that I forget the time and got totally exhausted the other evening when I realised that I'd done 9.5 hours instead of 6!

Tomorrow is a day off so I am going into Shrewsbury with Dawn as she has a stall at a Green Fair for the day and I'll be able to look around the town as well as perhaps help her set up and take down the stall.