Catching Up

It's a good while since I last posted but I thought I'd make a start again now that the nights are drawing in. It's not been one of my better summers this year as I had a few days in hospital in July though happily all is well now. For Bilbo Baggins it has been even more traumatic as he has had to have one of his hind legs amputated due to an aggressive bone cancer. He's currently at the vets as he has had a bad reaction to his first session of chemotherapy but hopefully they will pull him through and then we must decide whether or not to carry on or just let things take their natural course. He was doing really well until the chemo and I think we'd rather he had a shorter life feeling good than a longer one feeling grim.

On a happier note I was down in Suffolk at the end of July for Jude's 1st birthday celebration.

Jude and his family have moved house during the summer and this is part of their new garden. They are literally surrounded by fields but only 10 minutes walk from the village. It's a wonderful setting.

In early September I spent a weekend in Shropshire with Time Travellers our local archaeology group. On Friday we visited the Roman town of Wroxeter once the fourth largest town in Roman Britain. The remains of the bath house is all that is visible now though.

Just down the lane is the church of St Andrew which was mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086. Some parts of the present church date back to the 12th century. The photo above is of the font which is made from part of a Roman column.

The 14th century parish chest where the parish registers and other valuable documents would have been kept.

In the chancel are three very good table tombs still with most of their original colour on. The nearest one belongs to Sir Thomas Bromley who died in 1555. Sir Thomas was an executor of Henry VIII's Will so an important man in his time.

After checking in at the Buckatree Hall Hotel half a dozen of us decided to climb The Wrekin which was close by.The Wrekin is a famous Shropshire landmark, it's 1335 feet high and from the top on a clear day you can see fifteen English and Welsh counties. My husband has climbed it many times in his youth as a geography and geology student and says it's always been either raining or foggy when he's done it. There's a saying that 'if you can see The Wrekin it's going to rain and if you can't see it it's already raining':) At the top of The Wrekin is an Iron Age hillfort although only earthworks are visible now.

This is Heaven Gate - if you enlarge the previous photo and look at the drawing you will be able to pick out the two mounds which were the entrance to the hillfort. This was the main power base of the Celtic tribe the Cornovii whose territory covered Shropshire, Cheshire, north Staffordshire, north Herefordshire and eastern parts of the Welsh counties of Flintshire, Powys and Wrexham. Since my roots in Cheshire go back to at least the 1600s I'd guess that some Cornovii blood flows in my veins:)

My husband was absolutely right about the chances of having a clear day, as you can see there was low cloud obscuring the view even though it was a warm, dry day.

Here we are at the top! As you can see from my hair it was pretty windy up here!

Saturday and Sunday were spent visiting Ironbridge with its famous bridge over the River Severn. It was the world's first cast iron bridge and was opened in 1781. It looks idyllic doesn't it - but this is where the Industrial Revolution began. The Ironbridge Gorge and its Museums deserve a post to themselves so I'll leave that until later this week.