| Hike Southbound through Britain with Daryl May Click for Northbound hike |
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| Days S44 - S52 English Midlands | |
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Day S48 - Ludlow to Leominster
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| Southbound Home Start hiking here Scottish Highlands Central Scotland Southern Scotland North of England English Midlands English West Country Northbound Home |
Friday, April 11, 2008
Time of departure: 12.00 pm Time of arrival: 5.30 pm Place departed: Ludlow, Shropshire Place arrived: Leominster, Herefordshire Miles: 12 Cum miles: 679.7 Percent complete: 70.0  The Black Swan, Leominster **Cost for bed and breakfast: £30 ($60) |
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| Top of page: More of Ludlow. Just above: Leominster |
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It rained hard at times on the long drive from Sheffield back to
Ludlow, but cleared up by the time I said a sad goodbye to John and
Andrea at the Feathers Hotel.
The Feathers is one of Ludlow's fine medieval buildings, and I also enjoyed my walk through the town, passing an open-air market and then crossing the old, single-lane Ludford Bridge. (I don't know why the town is Ludlow while the bridge is Ludford; the river isn't the Lud but the Teme.) I walked the B4361 to Leominster (pronounced and occasionally spelled Lemster). It's a quiet enough backroad well away from the A49. However, I messed up by taking a public footpath near Overton, in order to avoid a steep hill on the road. Soon enough, the path became invisible, and my best guess at where it should lie was apparently in error. My way across some farmer's fields ended in barbed wire fencing, mud, a river - and emus! The emus trotted across a field in front of me, sharing a field with sheep. The farmer had been especially industrious with his barbed wire, leaving no corner of his fields and gates unstrewn with three layers of it. It took me an hour to extricate myself from this, by which time any saving in effort by not using the road had been eroded. This pantomine added a mile or so to my walk to Leominster. There my search for accommodation had a bad beginning when the first two B&Bs I tried failed even my quality tests without my taking two steps through the door. The third place, a hotel, was too expensive, but the fourth, a pub called the Black Swan, was OK, and I dropped my backpack there and went in search of food. I met two end-to-end bikers on the road today, recognizing them by their substantial pannier bags. My greeting of "I think you're going to the place I'm coming from" turned out to be accurate. |
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| Rest day 16 © 2007 and 2008 Daryl May Day S49 | |