Shrewsbury

The weather forecast for our trip to Shrewsbury in the middle of November was far from good with high winds and heavy rain threatened.  Sometimes makes you wonder why we do our hobby!!! We were heading for Oxon Hall Touring Park which is on the outskirts of Shrewsbury and very conveniently next door to a Park and Ride. Our normal short trips are Monday to Friday but for some reason the site was fully booked on the Thursday so we changed our plans so our stay went from Sunday to Thursday. The non-availability of the Thursday may have been to do with the annual switching on of the site’s Christmas Lights the coming weekend. However, given that the site was no more than 20% full during our stay there would have to be a massive influx of campers to fill the site! Whilst not a Club site they do offer discounts for Caravan Club members which does alleviate the otherwise rather expensive site fees. 

The main reason we don’t particularly like leaving, or arriving back home at weekends, is the problem of more parked cars which makes it more difficult to get the motorhome in and out of the back garden, although it’s a lot easier than it was with our previous caravan. It was windy when we left home and as we joined the MI going north we could feel the gusts pushing against the motorhome. We were in no rush so we took it easy and the wind did seem to ease off a bit. Fortunately the forecast rain did not materialise other than a few spots here and there. We used the M6 Toll and claimed our Caravan Club 50% discount which makes it much easier to accept the toll. The M6 Toll also has a very nice caravan/motorhome parking area at its Norton Canes Services. 

Monday and it was time for our first trip into Shrewsbury. We made use of the Park and Ride buses. Unfortunately not free with our bus pass but we did get a 50% discount on the return fare made it better value. We soon discovered that Shrewsbury had lots of nooks and crannies with narrow passage ways as well as winding narrow streets. We eventually made our way to Quarry Park which forms the tip of Shrewsbury in a loop of the River Severn. As you walk around the Park road you can see the famous Shrewsbury School high up on the opposite bank of the river. Some of you, of a certain age, will no doubt remember Percy Thrower who was one of the first TV gardeners. The connection here is that he was Parks Superintendent for Shrewsbury and lived in the house at the top of the Park looking down to the river. Not many of us get that sort of privilege with our job!!! Another famous son of Shrewsbury is Charles Darwin.  The weather had been reasonable kind to us today. 

We return to Shrewsbury on the Tuesday to explore the other side of the town. We started at the Castle although we did not venture in. It is now a Regimental Museum. We found our way down to the river with the intention of walking around to Quarry Park from the other direction. Mother Nature had other ideas as the path we needed to take was under water where the rive was so high!!!  We had to continue our walk of discovery at a higher level where we discovered that Shrewsbury has a toll bridge across the river, at 20p a lot cheaper than the M6 Toll!!! We also discovered the remains of the old walls before getting back to Quarry Park. Our destination was the Weatherspoon’s by the bridge just outside of the Park. Two steak meals and a bottle of wine for £16.99 can’t be bad!!! It had been raining most of the morning but as we were having our meal in the pub the sun came out! Mind you waiting for the bus we could feel the wind was getting stronger. We were right in the path of storm Barney as the new convention of naming storms was recently unveiled. Unfortunately we got very upfront and personal with Barney and I don’t recall the motorhome being rocked by gust after gust before. Strangely there was very little rain associated with the storm.  That came on our last day at the site so we decided to take it easy. 

The journey home was not the best we have had. We decided to use the normal M6 route as the M6 Toll required a diversion past some roadworks. It is an amazingly busy road and you really do have to have your wits about you. The pouring rain didn’t help either!!! At least when we got home there were no parked cars and the motorhome was barely on the side of the road for 10 minutes before being safely tucked away in the back garden. 

More photos here