A Saturday Away

My parents are great. After a very busy summer they offered to give Woody and me a day to ourselves and took the boys off for adventures on steam trains and up church towers. So what to do with Autumn creeping in and a whole day to potter about? Only one choice for us, off to Ludlow we must go.

Up over the Shropshire Hills the season is much further on than in the Moorlands surprisingly. Every shade of crimson, sienna and burnt umber lined the hedgerows as we trundled along one of my favourite journeys in the world from Eccleshall to Newport ,(I ignore the bit through Telford - I studied near there for a year and I just have to admit its really not my sort of town), then on across the Severn, uphill to Much Wenlock and then the final stretch to Ludlow with the mighty tower of St Lawrence's church beckoning us on.

This journey turns me into a jibberring wreck of joy but we can only contemplate coming in the season of mists and mellow fruitfullness. There's something so magical about the textures and colours of Shropshire's patchwork landscape that transfixes me.

Acre after acre of blonde, stubble fields sat hard up against newly ploughed velvety furrows that snaked around knots of woodland changing into their autumn clothes. Yesterday was a day of heavy clouds then bright low sunshine that threw amazing shadows across the countryside as the clouds scudded swiftly over a soft blue sky. No photos sadly but those pictures will stay in my head all season.

This weekend is the Ludlow and Marches Food Festival , usually the sort of busy event that would put us off visiting but being just us two we thought we'd make the most of it and enjoy a bit of festiveness. Well I did.

Going to a Food Festival with a non-foodie is interesting believe me. Woody has no interest whatsoever. He likes a good meal but only if its quick and he doesn't have to get involved.  Left to his own devices he'd live totally from the freezer and the tin cupboard. London Grill with fish fingers and a fried egg is Woody's idea of foodie heaven. I was in my element though.

So we didn't do the tented village inside the castle but we visited the Fringe stalls and had a proper linger around the market admiring cobnuts and damsons, lychees and fennel, all sorts of tomatoes and fabulous apples. Woody does however love his cheese and fruit so we treated ourselves to a few local specials and the most delicious peaches.

Mostly we just enjoyed a bit of good old fashioned sauntering, people watching and mooching. There were Sausauge Trails, Ale Trails, Waiters Races, Pudding tasting; all sort of queues for this and that but we could still potter about in one of our favourite places and just enjoy the day.

Ludlow has few chain shops and is a British pioneer of the Italian Slow Food idea that puts shoppers back in touch with the best produce from where they live with the emphasis on quality, provenance and taste.

But there are other traders too, vintage heaven with lots of lovely emporiums selling salvage, clothing, brocante and lighting but my favourite shop is a traditional ironmongers, just like Frost's where my mum and dad used to shop. You could get everything from lawn seed to a roll of lino for the kitchen floor, all in a village shop in a row of terraced houses. Brilliant.

We came home with new books, old books, a few treats to stash away for Christmas, the new Country Living (perfect timing) and a beautiful bunch of Shropshire chyrsanthemums. Mine are a way off flowering yet so these are bringing a lovely feeling of harvest to our little home for now.What a wonderful day.