To blog, or not to blog? That is the question. Not to blog seemed to be the easy way out, but then a reader request! What can a poor writer do?
OK, let’s see if we can make this work, albeit a few days into the trip.
Day 1 Sunday
It’s hard work packing the van for 6 weeks, for 2 people. Go on, gentle reader and check just how many pairs of underwear you have - I’ve just packed 3 weeks worth.
First stop is a pub stop in rural Herefordshire (or is it Worcestershire, the borders all seem to blur in these border counties). Anyway the King’s Head in Docklow not only welcomes us to sleep in their car park overnight but also has a beer festival. The one thing it failed to mention is that it’s not much of a car park! We arrive, much in need of a beer, only to find the car park full and an overflow field being used. Make that an overflow ploughed field! We park, nose down like a Stuka on a bombing run, obviously not an incline we’d be inclined to sleep at and wander into the pub. It’s a token system. 10 tokens = 5 pints = £25 . We persuade them to sell us 2 tokens for a fiver. There were a handful of beers on offer, Liz had Alsopps Bitter and I think my beer was Grinbull. We decide not to stay despite the beers being good.
Plan B was the nearby Stockton Cross.A phone call and sorted but they close their kitchen at 4. So another half at the Kings Had beer festival (same again for Liz. Same brewery, (different beer for me). But the smash burgers they lubricanted were excellent.
Stockton Cris was 5 miles up the road, Wye Valley HPA and Butty Bach were well kept, but just as important the car park was as level as a master mason’s bubble. A couple of pints and a good nights sleep .
Day 2 Monday
Liz wants to see Ludlow castle. And we both want to see St Laurence’s Church which is supposed to be very interesting. Other places of much interest are Smithfield Car park, where, for a pittance, camper vans can overnight. It’s not on our agenda this trip, but for future reference. We’ve visited the brewery previously and despite its obvious draw I’m driving. So we’ll leave that for another day - perhaps combined with a car park overnighted.
Car park first - mainly because it had to come first, without it we couldn’t visit the town! Anyway it was s impressive - fees are 40p an hour flat per hour so a maximum 8 hour stay would set up back £3.20 - in Eastleigh that would buy you barely enough time to nip out and collect a bag of chips! But paying by cards I noticed that after the minimum 40p first hour, future increments could be by the 1/4 hour (10p). What a sensible system. And the overnight bays are a bit close but would suffice
{ width=30% }
Day 3 Tuesday
On to Worcester, a huge Roman city in Shropshire. The campsite is a simple field with stand-pipe for water and a WC sited over a chess-pit for chemical toilet waste. Simple camping. What’s more, it’s in the middle of nowhere. The village has a handful of houses, a wedding venue hotel and no pub or shop. Oh, it does also have a (no longer used) Saxon church and a huge Roman city, much of it underneath today’s farmsteads