An Afternoon in Shrewsbury

Hello, thank you for calling in.  I am still on a post-meringue-success high.  Today the sun has shone and we have been on a family outing to Shrewsbury.  I thought you might like to see where we have been - I should warn you that this is a photo-heavy post so if you need to make yourself comfortable, do it now, before we go any further.  As ever, you can click on any photo to see it enlarged if you want to.

 

Shrewsbury is our lovely county town and sits within a loop of the River Severn.  First of all, shall we deal with the matter of pronunciation?  When I was a child I was taught that the proper way to pronounce the name of this town I had never visited was, despite its spelling, Shroesbury, so when I moved to Shropshire I was surprised to discover that everyone I met called it Shroosbury.  Since then, I have met some residents who call it Shroesbury and it might be a class thing.  I say Shroosbury and so does The Teacher, who lives there. 

 

We parked by the river, near the English Bridge - there is a Welsh Bridge too, on the other side of the town. 

As we walked along the path beside the river we came across a few of these plaques -

The Wakeman School and Arts College closed in 2013 and this is its legacy to Shrewsbury: between 1983 and 2013 every student at the school made a ceramic tablet which depicted a window or building in the town.  Most of them collected their work before they left the school but about 1,000 of them never did and so these have been mounted and are displayed inside and outside buildings all over the town.  It's called the Wakeman Trail. 

 

A bit further along, this "window" made me smile -

 

 

Can you see why?  It's not a window at all, it's painted on in the space where the window was!  These steps led up to the bridge -

 

 

but we didn't climb them, we carried on along the path under the bridge - phew! there were no trolls - and then stopped to look back at the bridge itself -

 

 

Can you see the fish in the stonework by the arch?  Now for the obligatory pic of cute cygnets on the river -

 

 

This pub on the opposite bank seemed busy and it looked as if some of its customers had travelled there by boat -

 

 

See how the residents of these houses are making the most of their steep riverside gardens

 

 

 

 

And this daughter of a former rower was delighted to see these young men travel past -

 

 

 We turned away from the river and towards the town when we reached The Quarry, the town's public park -

 

 

At last we had reached our destination: the Shrewsbury Food Festival.  We paid our £6 entrance fee and entered the park. 

 

 

There were stalls all around the edges of the park as well as in the middle.  They were selling food, drinks and crafts and I didn't take enough pictures.  There were bands playing on a stage and there was a climbing wall.  And there was some very cute pork and beef "on the hoof" -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at this: it's a van with a wood-fired pizza oven inside! -

 

 

On such a warm, sunny day I was very glad of a delicious lemonade and lime from this stall

 

 

While we were queueing I saw a girl wearing a lovely skirt so I asked her if I could photograph it and she agreed! -

 

 

And then we saw our favourite ice-cream van.  Florence is a converted VW split-screen camper van dating from 1966 -

 

 

And the reason we are so fond of her?  She came to The Teacher's and Flashman's wedding last summer and was quite a hit. 

 

 

The festival is still on tomorrow if you are in the vicinity and you fancy it.  You can find out more here.  I shan't be there because I am going to Narnia.

 

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x