A change of scene.

Our son Nicholas and the glorious Gabriella have moved from the hurly-burly of London to a deep rural idyll in Herefordshire. I couldnt wait to pay a visit. This was an area I knew well back in 1967 because I could easily reach it from Newport riding my Lambretta on on a day out. I wanted to see if it was a lovely now as it was then.

Leaving the cluttered motorways behind at Worcester, I suddenly found myself back in Tolkien's Shire; a landscape of rolling hills and ancient hedgerows that define small fields and orchards. Most of the farms specialise in livestock rather than crops, which is in direct contrast to East Anglia where I live now. It's a landscape that hasn't changed much in 400 years or more, and many of the houses and farms are much older than that. There is a black-and-white driving trail that takes in those villages and towns that still feature a significant number of medieval timber framed buildings.

Weobley (Weebly not Wobbly) is an outstanding example of a large medieval village with a (ruined) castle at the upper end of the street and a church at the other. The main street is broad and features a range of old black-and-white buildings that have, of course, changed their functions over the years, so that we now have two pubs at the top of the town, a restaurant, a cafe, a village shop, two B&Bs, a unique mini petrol-station, a hairdresser's, post office and an Indian restaurant that used to be the Red Lion Hotel.  Below that lies the Cruck House, possible the oldest in England, where Nick and Gabbs now live.

A village walking trail that has information boards around the streets was useful to find my way around, but it's impossible to get lost as long as you can see the church steeple.

Taking a short loop beyond the main street, I found a couple of farms, an old warehouse that is being converted to flats, a library that holds a museum, a working pottery and more historic buildings. I then explored the churchyard before picking up Nick and Gabby and heading back up the hill for supper.

It still wasn't dark, so we set off to find the castle mounds. Nick and Gabby were delighted to find that they could get a phone signal from the top of the town whereas I was more pleased to see that there was a web of public footpaths that circled the village and radiated from it. In one direction we could see Cleeve Hill in England and, in the other, the ridge of the Black Mountains above Ryader, in Wales on the other side of the River Wye.

I fell in love with Weobley and with the superb pub at the top of the town and I hope that Nick and Gabby will stay there a while so that I can return again and again.



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