Since our visit to Ludlow the city has been named The Great Town in the UK and Ireland by The Academy of Urbanism.  The Academy seeks, in part, to honor "the art of placemaking."  Having spent two afternoons there, I would certainly agree that Ludlow richly deserves its designation.


The Feathers is one of Ludlow's signature buildings and you certainly can't visit the town without taking in the black and wide beamed exterior which dates from the early seventeenth century. 


                              

                                                        The Feathers Hotel -
                                a much newer bar and restaurant also named
                                         The Feathers resides to the right.     

For our tastes, however, The Feathers has retained its look but lost much of its feel.  We opted instead to have our first Ludlow beer in The Bull said to be the oldest pub in town and not far from The Feathers. 

The Bull dates back to the twelfth century under other names; word has it that it may be haunted by both curious clergy and a golden haired little girl.  Its courtyard is well known for hosting local musical events but when we were there it was a quiet late Wednesday afternnon with only a few locals at the bar.  I'll always remember The Bull as the pub where I first had scrumpy.  My uncultivated palate can sometimes have difficulty with the finer details of beer; scrumpy, however, is a different story.  I immediately knew that scrumpy was scrumptious and would be a favorite of mine.  Scrumpy is apple cider but decidedly not the cider served at children's parties in the United States.  It is strong with a distinct golden sometimes cloudy color and a strong fruity taste - along with a good bit of alcohol content.  I asked for it first throughout the rest of our trip.

Outside its city limits Ludlow is known for three things:  Food - particularly sausage - and two landmarks, Ludlow Castle and St. Laurence Church.  So, after warming ourselves for a few minutes we set out to investigate all three.  

Sausage shops are abundant in Ludlow and the competition amongst them is keen.  Just down from The Bull sits

                                     

                                                                Carters

one of the most highly awarded purveyors of meat in Ludlow.  Throughout England and Wales people seem to have a relationship with raw meat that eludes me.  My parents, hardworking farm folks brought up during the Depression, have this same sort of ability to raise, kill and eat meat without hesitation.  I am not a strict vegetarian and I understand that many animals eat other animals but I'm not sure that those animals know each other by name.  Still, in the cold gathering dark near the holidays, window meat shopping on the narrow Ludlow streets made me feel a part of the community in a way that I seldom feel stateside.  At any moment it seems that Bob Crachit could appear carrying Tiny Tim on his shoulder.

We moved the car - and found an actual head in parking space with lines - to the other side of town where we discovered whole cherries covered in dark chocolate and sprinkle covered chocolate hedgehogs at The Chocolate Gourmet on Castle Street; not a glitzy store in the Godiva mold but more of a sundries shop with an emphasis on chocolate.  We took several of the store's goodies home; in fact, this night chocolate was our in room dinner.  

It was getting dark - and way cold - so we decided to step into the Blue Boar before heading to our lodgings in Shrewsbury and return the next day for food and surveying the castle.  No scrumpy at the Boar and a meringue with thick sauce that didn't impress - more because of my expectations than a particular failing on its part.  A quick word here about pub names.  You will find several Blue Boars, hundreds of Crowns and Swans and Fox and Hounds, very few of which are related although they are often in close proximity.  Whenever you get a pub's name, get its address as well otherwise you may end up in a much different pub than the one to which you were headed.

My memory of the Blue Boar relates more to the feeling I had as we sat there.  A party of some twenty or so men came in, obviously a business group sharing a pre-arranged dinner; a mixture of working class men with dirt under their nails and the men just above them who still remembered having dirt under their nails.  They congregated with increasingly comfortable conversation and a nodded reminder to one another that a woman was in the room.  We never figured out what their occupations were.  Earlier in the day traffic had been slightly delayed as a cross country horse jumping competition made its way across the country where the road was.  From the look and talk of the men we thought they might have been helping our in some way with the competition.

Their daily work was not what caught my attention it was rather the way in which they interacted and the way in which they approached the pub.  There was a feel amongst them of having an established life, of knowing each other for years.  Now they may have just all met last week and been brought in from other towns and even countries for all I really know but I doubt it.  Sitting there in that room I envied them and thought how nice it would be to have families and jobs and histories that had roots that went down to the bedrock.  Of course, in truth, I'm sure they all had their burdens and after a few months I would probably chafe under the sameness of small town life.  Changing lives with someone without any knowledge of their lives has been the basis for more than one horror story.  Still, on that cold night in that warm pub, it was pleasant to contemplate a life lived in a way so different from my own. 

With that thought I will leave the further pursuit of sausage and old buildings for tomorrow.

Pack in suitcase(@WhileYouWander)