A weekend escape

Last weekend we escaped to the beautiful countryside of Shropshire and spent 3 nights in a lovely self catering cottage outside the village of Clun.  Our reason for choosing this area was that there was a Green Man Festival on in Clun over the weekend (more about the Green Man in another post).  The cottage was way up near the woods and all you could hear were sheep and birds - wonderful.



Our cottage



The photo below is the view out of our bedroom window :

Clun is a small village but has a lot going on throughout the year, with several festivals to entertain people.  Our first day was spent exploring the village and some of the surrounding area - we really liked the wild boar sculpture that someone had in their garden, and the purple flowers that adorned lots of the old stone walls.

We visited Trinity Hospital which was built in 1615 - a chapel and almshouses for 12 old men to live in.  The grounds are lovely and there are still people living in the almshouses.



A statue of two of the former residents



Me and Bertie Boo

Fabulous door in Clun



Don't you just love this door knocker?



One of the local pubs had a name that I had to take a photo of - it's named after a ship called the Kangaroo.

In a nearby village called Aston-on-Clun they have a celebration each year for Arbor Day, which is when they have a 'wedding parade' and dress the Arbor Tree - it is a celebration that dates back to Celtic times.  Look it up on the web as the history is really interesting.  This is the tree still looking a bit sad without it 's summer leaves, but it still has flags in it from previous years, and as you can see from below I was very pleased to find an Australian one amongst the flags, even if it is a bit tangled up.

After exploring we headed back to the cottage, Ken and Bertie explored the woods and then we settled down for a relaxing night in front of a lovely wood heater. 


Ken loved making fire - to the point that we had to open the windows as we were too hot

  Outside the cottage window was a bird feeder and it was really nice to watch the birds coming and going.  There was also a mouse, we were told it was a Kangaroo Mouse, but as they are native to the USA I'm not sure if that's correct - as you can see from my pictures it was very difficult to get a picture of it.

As you can see he's very shy and didn't want his picture taken

Can you spot the mouse above?

My two boys relaxing in the cottage

That's it for day one - too much to put in one post.  Look forward to graveyards, castles, Mummers, and of course the Green Man.

Until next time, stay safe and look after each other.

Pamela & Ken

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