Shrewsbury

We arrived in Shrewsbury Monday mid afternoon to stay with relatives and were enthusiastically welcomed by all including Oscar who is a gorgeous Yorkshire terrier.  It was wonderful to see our relatives again, to catch up on the last 8 or so years since they were visiting us in Australia.

Tuesday we had a relaxing morning and went into Shrewsbury town for lunch and had to cross the river on this little foot ferry as the foot bridge nearby was closed for repairs.  From memory the trip cost 50p and 40p for pensioners.  

We had a look around the beautiful Quarry Gardens that were in part being replanted for an upcoming flower show. 

Rabbit shapes made from succulents.  Very quirky!

We had a look at the lovely medieval buildings with gorgeous old designs and windows.  Some of the buildings are very crooked, it’s hard for Aussies to comprehend buildings so old could still be standing.

 

We came across this statue of Clive of India.  I use curry powder with the label Clive of India, so the man did exist once.

Tuesday evening we went to a lovely English pub for tea, the company, food and atmosphere were wonderful.

Wednesday was another relaxing day, it was just so lovely to spend time with family catching up and also stopping to catch our breath after all our travels of the past 6 weeks.  That evening we had a picnic tea before enjoying a rather wonderful open air performance of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor performed by the Shropshire Drama Company.  The performance was brilliant, the acting wonderful and although it got very cold towards the end of the evening, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.   Here are some photos from the performance.

Thursday morning, you guessed it was another relaxing morning spent talking and drinking cups of tea.  My cousin came over after lunch and I had the interesting and very enjoyable experience of a fish pedicure.  No photos unfortunately.  Our feet were dangling in a tank of little Rufa fish for 15 minutes and with the fish nibbling your feet eating the dead skin.  Sounds revolting but it was wonderful. While I was having my feet nibbled hubby went with one of our relatives to the Iron Bridge, the first cast iron bridge built in England but using the techniques of wood joinery.  They also had a look at some old Roman ruins in Wroxeter.

In the evening we had a family indoor bbq as unfortunately the English summer was being most uncooperative with rain and cold weather.  We met more of our relatives and very much appreciated the effort they made to come and see us

Friday.......another relaxing morning.  We had a few things to do in Shrewsbury town that afternoon such as picking up some shoes that had been mended and sending off a parcel to a cousin in Australia.

We were spoilt that evening with a wonderful roast dinner followed by apple crumble.  After dinner we tasted a few liqueurs and I had my first taste of Sloe Gin which was very nice. Hic!

We had a very hard time leaving our relatives Saturday morning feeling our time with them was all too short.  We are just so happy to have spent time with our English cousins and marvel at how well our families get on despite the fact that we live on opposite sides of the world.  We are most appreciative to our relatives for the time and effort that went into having us stay.  One of my cousins taught me a new word which I love….. alcofrolic, it's what you say when you've had too much alcohol!!  I enjoyed those whiskies.

I'll leave you with a few photos of Oscar being cute and the back garden. As this time was very much family oriented, there are not too many photos.  I hope you'll understand.
 

Clematis in the back yard.

I'll be back soon with stories from Normandy.

Bye for now,

Anne xx