Ludow - a tweed adventure

Ludlow - a tweed adventure

The Cotswold way

I am very belatedly catching up on our adventures in October - I really don't know how the time has disappeared! I promise to be more diligent.  

Early in October our friend Jess was coming to stay. Having said she didn't like London from her previous visits - and that she'd never in fact been outside of London into England, we decided that rather than exploring London her first weekend with us, we would go for a driving adventure in the English countryside instead.

The Water in Bourton on the Water

 We picked up a car in Kings Cross, piled Jess and our friend Kate into the backseats, connected the SatNav and headed off to Ludlow - claiming to be one of the most perfect towns in England.  Like all good adventures involving members of the Berry family - the route was decided based on going through the towns along our route with the most amusing names. Even the destination was chosen because it is in Shropshire - which is fun to say - and also the shire in which Bunbury lives for those Importance of Being Ernest fans. 

The pub by the water - for lunch

Lunchtime found us in 'Bourton on the Water' - which was not to be confused with the nearby 'Bourton on the Hill'. Bourton on the Water is an lovely example of a Cotswold town - with tiny lanes that could barely fit a single car through, yellow stone buildings and achingly pretty little pubs by 'the water' from which the town got its name. 

We parked out on the edge of the town in the huge carpark created for the town's tourists - complete with the 'conveniences' - which we learned were actually the public toilets. Jess has apparently had some run ins with the automated public toilets favoured around Europe - but this took the cake. Once we paid our 30p to get through the turnstiles into the toilets, we basically didn't need to touch anything to make it go once inside. This wasn't really a luxury - as once the automated systems were started they couldn't be interrupted until the cycle was complete. This left us unable to work out how to get the 'all in one' sink, soap-dispenser and hand dryer to stop drying our hands before it had washed them. Not sure this was as convenient as the engineers had hoped. 

Berry on the Water in Bourton on the Water (and Tony)

Clipboard in the Water

Once we escaped the automatic conveniences we walked in along the water into town - over many little bridges that criss-crossed the stream. Tony and Jess went to pose on one - and discovered a clipboard that had sadly fallen in. The stream is not very deep - but the bridges are just high enough to make it too far to reach your arm down to pick up things that have fallen in. We saw this phenomenon in action during lunch. A girl of 4 or so and her father were walking across the bridge near us - when her teddy jumped from her grip into the water below. The girl was very distressed, and her father dutifully tried to rescue Teddy. We were comfortably seated across the water with an excellent view of the poor father's attempts to reach Teddy before the current got him and took him downstream. Sticks were found with which to try to get Teddy within reach of the shore. Even once he was against the wall of the stream, there was not quite enough room for the father to reach down to grab him - there was a man seated right in the way (who had really long arms) but who did not offer to move or to help. Finally, with the father lying on his belly, and his daughter looking like she was about to jump into the water to rescue Teddy, he managed to get a grip on the sopping toy and haul it and himself out of harms way - to the raucous applause of us and everyone else at the pub. Sadly we were too amused by the scene unfolding to take any photos. 

Ludlow at dusk 

From Bourton on the Water we headed through Stow on the Wold, Bourton on the Hill, through the beautiful countryside towards Ludlow - where we arrived just on dusk. We had booked into a B&B at an old mill - called 'The Mill House' just on the outskirts of Ludlow and a nice walk from the centre of town. The stream that once turned the mill wheel ran right under the house and you could hear it trickling away - giving the whole house a very calm feel. The B&B was beautifully finished - our room was lovely and large (the girls' one was smaller - but their bathroom was larger than the room itself!), with views out over the cottage style garden.

The Feathers Hotel

We had booked in for dinner at the Feathers Hotel. which apart from being a beautiful example of Jacobean architecture, is apparently one of the most haunted places in England. Unfortunately we saw no ghosts during our dinner - although the restaurant was a little bit of a ghost town. Several functions in the upstairs rooms meant that the guests from the hotel who would normally have filled the restaurant and given it some atmosphere, were all absent. We did have a delicious meal with very attentive staff - who did an excellent job of avoiding the various challenges posed by Jess and my allergies.

Castle Ruins

The next morning saw us up early by our standard (9am) for a cooked breakfast in the B&B's charming breakfast room. All locally sourced ingredients were cooked to order - and a selection of 6 different homemade jams left us very happy and full and ready to explore the main attraction of Ludlow - the castle!

View from the ramparts

Ludlow castle perches above the fast running river Teme, which would have provided an additional layer of defence to this fortress. The castle left you in no doubt that castle life was not romantic.The small buildings were dark and dank (not just because they were in ruins - I'm confident they wouldn't have been much nicer in their hayday), and the big rooms would have been cold and draughty.

We had a wonderful time climbing all over the different parts of the castle, which had been added to over the 500 years until it was finally abandoned in 1689. The style of buildings varied from the very first fortress defences of the Normans, further fortified when it became a royal palace and was part of the defences to keep back the Welsh rabble threatening the peace from just over the marsh lands.

Views across the courtyard

Enough of the stairs inside the towers remained to allow us to climb up to the very top of the ramparts and peer down at the advancing army of Sunday tourists, and at the river far below.

King and Queen of the castle

Once safely down we partook in Castle tea and scones (with clotted cream), pottered around the market in the Ludlow square (I picked up a beautiful garnet necklace and tony found a tartan hip flask for £4!)  and got on the road back to London.

Lochs and Highland drives

Lochs and Highland drives

Finally catching up on the rest of the Northern trip after the silly season. 

Tony on the banks of Loch Lomond

We started our morning with excellent breakfast in the dinning room of Cadross estate listening to an over enthusiastic rooster. From there we wound our way down to the edge of Loch Lomand to admire its bonny banks before setting off to the proper north of Inverness. 

View down Loch Lomond

We both heartily agree that the highlight of our trip was the drive we did through the  Trossachs national park, past the looming peaks of Ben More, Ben Lui and Ben Starav - a mountain range called the Grampian Mountains. The scenery really was breathtakingly beautiful. The stark contrast between the green of the pines (plantation) and the brown and red of the hills was stunning, but then you added the snow. The winding mountain roads would take you past a mighty peak, when suddenly a snowy peak would appear around the side, and grow until it took over the whole of the horizon. 

First peak at the peaks

Most spectacular were the sharp edges of the mountains, reflected in the clear mountain lakes. Several people had pulled off on the edge of the road, right in the way of narrow 2 lane traffic, to capture the images - I did my best whilst the car was moving. 

Perfectly still lakes

We came through the mountain pass to a little village on the shores of Loch Leven. We pulled in for a break and bought some chips from a lovely lady in a roadside caravan (£1.50 for a serve of hot chips). The village is a holiday spot during the summer, however it gets very quiet during the winter and she described watching the sun creep further and further down the valley as the year progressed until it no longer reached her little food caravan. From that day she knew that the whole southern side of the valley and the loch wouldn’t see sun again until the start of the next summer. Her solution was to go to Egypt for a holiday. I’m not sure that would be enough for me to work/live in a place that didn’t see a spot of sunshine for half of each year.

Steep valleys and bleak houses

We continued through the mountains to Fort WIlliam which whilst not very pretty, was a strategically very important town. It was the point at which boats from the lower Lochs could enter Loch Ness and travel all the way to Inverness in the north. It is also the point from which many of the ferries to the Hebrides and other islands depart. 

Locks at Loch Ness

Loch gates

From Fort William we travelled up Loch Lochy to Fort Augustus where we searched for a place for lunch. We had by this time developed a lunch curse on our trip. Whenever we thought it was about time to find a place for lunch, all possible choices would evaporate from the map, and we would be left with dodgy roadside options of pies, horrid sandwiches or in a couple of cases nothing at all but a few packets of crisps. Partly this was due to the time of year - all the good pubs serving lunch were closed for the winter - or only open on Fridays and the weekends. Fort Augustus was no exception and we ended up getting take away rolls with sausages or battered chicken in them. We ate them standing by the locks that got boats from Loch Lochy to Loch Ness. This was the only good thing about the lunch as we busily distracted ourselves from the disgusting lunch by trying to work out how the system of gates and pumps in the lock worked.

We followed Loch Ness up its entire length - arriving at its second most famous feature - Castle Urquhart only 40 minutes before it closed. The site is set up for thousands of tourists to pass through and has a movie theatre showing a video on the history of the castle which you are supposed to watch before you head down to the ruin itself. We were so late in the day that they allowed us to skip the video and head straight to the site. We were lucky in a way, we had the site almost to ourselves in the gathering dusk (with the exception of about 5 other tourists) and the attendant who was supposed to be locking up ended up following us around much of the site giving us a personal tour and history lesson. Urquhart  was another castle eventually dismantled (blown up) so it couldn’t be used by the other side once it was surrendered.  A controlling point for most of Loch Ness at a time when there were no roads from one end to the other it was an extremely important strategic base and was claimed by one side or another until its destruction in 1692. One really interesting feature was the water gate where most of the access to the castle was gained including all supplies of food. The road along the Loch wasn’t built until 100 years after the castle was destroyed. 

Castle Urquhart

We finished our drive on the Black Isle just West of Inverness in a lovely B&B run by Minty and Gavin. They had booked us into their local pub in the tiny village of North Kessock for dinner, and after Tony had sampled the haggis and I had fabulously fresh fish (Scotland really does excellent seafood), we pootled back to Minty’s house, and curled up in our  separate little beds (we had forgotten to check that there was a double available - but it ended up being quite quaint and 1950s’ ish with hot water bottles that Minty had thoughtfully put in our beds while we were at dinner).