Shrewsbury, Shropshire CADFAEL'S town!!

Shrewsbury has wonderful medieval and Tudor buildings. My attention was caught at first because I love watching Cadfael, the series from BBC about a medieval monk who lived here in the 11th century. The Cadfael series does a nice job of addressing the issues at the time. There was a civil war between people who supported William the Conquerer's daughter, Maud or Matilda, and people who supported his nephew, Steven, to be king. There were tensions between the Abbey that William the Conquerer set up here to tax the people, and the businesses of the town. The series includes the leper's hospital and the massacre of the people holding the castle for Maud by Steven's people, and other events of the time. It was so nice to read about the same events we've watched in the stories, written about as true history.

The town of Shrewsbury does a great job of providing leaflets for the Cadfael walk and for the buildings of the Tudors, the Victorians, the "the Elegance Period" between. The lady at the tourist office also found us a cozy room with a cat-friendly pub called "The Buck's Head." She called it "the book's head" though, which was really confusing until we figured out she was saying "buck."  I think she spelled it for us. :)

They also have some amazing Roman artifacts, including the biggest and shiniest silver mirror (it's about one foot across and very shiny) in Britain.

These are little perfume vials. Approximately 3 inches tall each one.

This is a rather nice bucket.

There was a collapse of some market buildings and some pottery and glass were very amazingly preserved! The pottery comes from southwest France. 

Shrewsbury is full of wonderful timbered buildings and cool street names. Here is Drinkwater Street.

The closes here are called "shuts." Same purpose as other places, though. They were yards where several people would live and could be closed off from the main streets at night for safety. Shrewsbury also had the security advantage of being inside the meander of the River Severn, so it almost has a moat all the way around. There's just a little keyhole that needed fortifying (though they did build a wall too eventually). It was settled in about the 7th century.

Some of the old buildings are very bulgy! This practically looks like a mushroom. They did build them out over the street to get more area on the upper floors, but this one surely has bulged over time too. The slants on some walls are quite extreme.

A very yummy lunch with a view of Cadfael's abbey!

A mile marker! I would love to know how old it is.

This is a fascinating building. I couldn't find anything about it online,  but the tourist brochure mentioned that the nifty chimneys are from the 15th century.

I like the leading covering the roof edges and the glass (broken) cover over that front section of ground at the front of the house.

The back garden of "Darwin's Town House B & B." Darwin was born here and went to school here, but I am not sure  if he actually lived in this house. Nice to imagine he did, though, and had palm trees and that nice back  conservatory.

I would love to know why  this wall is so much thicker at the bottom! So much history in this town.

Goodnight!

Llangollen Wales

Yesterday we actually took a wrong turn on our way to Shrewsbury and ended up in Wales. At first it was quite boring and the towns were dull, but I stopped (to calm down, from the terrible navigating!) at a pub for a half-pint of local beer (which was good) and asked if there were any touristy places nearby. The waiter didn't know, but a patron who was having a pint took the time to tell us about Llangollen, which was just 6 miles off the road to Shrewsbury. He also told us about The Gales, his favourite place to eat, which was lovely, and The Corn Mill (where we were going to also have snacks, but we couldn't get in without booking). 

The lady in the tourist office found us a room in a 300-year-old pub and we enjoyed the museum, the walkable town, and a local comedy night that we happened upon. 

You can see a shop called the Oggie Shop on the right hand side. That's the local name for a meat pie, which we bought and ate, as you can see below.  

Here is Yarrow beside a coracle boat in the museum.

Look at this medieval tile. I love finding things like this and thinking about who made them and who used them and bought them and installed them and lived with them. 

Here's their bridge and a nice pub beside it, where we had tea in the window seat with a wonderful view. 

There are canals all about this part of the world, with boats on them.

They have even (they being the 19th century engineers) built incredible aqueducts to carry the boats across valleys.

I like these mushrooms made of larch. The shop smelled wonderful.

Look at the thickness of this wool! It's amazing. I am not sure what one would do with such a small mat in area, but if it was yoga mat size, it would make an incredible bed.

The Corn Mill restaurant.

A smattering of Edinburgh and a gorgeous late November walk up the Almond River, Cramond, Scotland

With the Christmas market have come these huge amusement park rides! Tempting, aren't they? I enjoy the juxtaposition of the rides with the architecture. That pointy monument is to Sir Walter Scott. Biggest monument to a writer anywhere (if you ask me, JK Rowling is worth a bigger one, but I have a feeling that she'd prefer the money go to charity.

This is the skating ring. Not rink, but ring, around a bar that serves mulled wine. It's only frozen because it has electrical freezing coils underneath it. 

This looks cartoon-like, but it's a street of very old buildings, viewed from a terraced street above. Edinburgh has some very interesting criss-crossing high and low streets. This terrace was built when they remodelled the slummy Edinburgh at the end of the 18th century. It created steps and a better street where it used to be a very steep slope up to the castle.

Here is the beach along Cramond, where I walked with a woman I met at a party last weekend. People tend to walk their dogs off leash here and they're generally very well behaved.

If you continue along you can get to Leith.

I tried to take a selfie to see if I would look as happy and peaced out as I
did when I walked by the sea in Belle Ile, but no. Life here isn't as delightful as there, beautiful though it is.

However, it's a very magical place. Here are some owls that were just sort of hanging out on the Royal Mile, busker-style. Isn't that awesome? That's an Eagle Owl, the big one. Yarrow says the ladies told him that dark-eyed owls are nocturnal, orange-eyed owls are active at sunset & sunrise, and yellow-eyed owls are more active during the day.

Another extremely lovable thing about Edinburgh is all the men wearing kilts everywhere. Tartan looks amazing on women, too. How is THIS for a dress? It's absolutely amazing.

Yarrow and our old air BnB room-mate Erin from Sydney, Australia, eating a deep fried Mars bar.

Black Medicine, apparently one of JK Rowling's old writing haunts, by the university. Oddly, they have a Canadian thunderbird totem pole. All the furniture is carved wood. It's a good vibe place with inexpensive food.

We decided to walk up the Almond River (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Almond,_Lothian) from Cramond this Saturday, on our way to get cat litter at the store. I think that it is the most beautiful river walk I have ever had in my life, actually. I love the evidence of hundreds of years of civilization here and there. Actually, it's thousands of years -- the Romans settled in Cramond as far back as the first century after Christ.
That's Yarrow there, looking at the mist on the river.

Here is one of a few herons we saw today. He's waiting for fish to come out of the fish ladder beside the waterfall they've made for the mill.

The heron's in this picture, too, now that you know where he is maybe you can see him.

This is a 14th century bridge. You know what's cool? As I took out my phone to take the picture, it said the time was 14:14. Neat.

Yarrow's arms are clearly longer. He was assigned to take the selfie while we were standing on the bridge. (actually, he became impatient and took the duty upon himself).