Today was a walking, travel, waiting and exploring day.
As we ate our delicious breakfast, in what was originally the cow shed of this 16th century building, we watched the rain come down outside. After breakfast we took our time with packing and when we finally ventured out to walk The Thames Path the rain had stopped.
We saw many swan couples.
Not very many boats moving.
And only 1 other set of walkers.
Beautiful!
A large flock of geese with many goslings.
This keen young man explained the lock process. This is his summer job, relieving two lock keepers while they are on vacation. He has to drive back and forth between his two locks which are 5 miles apart. He explained that it was crucial to continually take measurements as the river was running very high.
We reluctantly returned to the B & B to collect our luggage and catch the bus back to Oxford.
Did you know that Oxford has 50,000 students? That is a whole lot of folks to fit in this small city!
The bus was 30 minutes late and very crowded. I suspect that the bus we were waiting for had been cancelled.
We easily caught a train to Wolverhampton where we were to change to a train to our destination of Shrewsbury.
However that train was also cancelled, we were told due to staffing shortages. We also heard later that many trains had been cancelled due to flooding. The next possible train was only 2 cars long, we were crammed inside.
Thankfully this portion was just a short journey.
This is what we look forward to and greets us at every B & B or hotel room.
A nice cuppa and a biscuit.
The very high River Severn from our 2nd floor window.
Shrewsbury is on Flood Alert.
After our reviving cuppa we went out exploring.
This is St Chad's Church.
There was a competition of many church bells, it was nearing 6pm on Sunday evening.
There is a park with pretty gardens not far from our hotel.
More Swans
On the high River Severn
Usually the river would be full of rowers but that activity has been stopped due to dangerous conditions.
There is a nice long river walk here. The river curls around the town in a tight C configuration.
Can you see how high the river is flowing?!
This town is full of charming higgledy piggledy ancient structures.
We appreciated the relative quietness of Shrewbury after busy Oxford.
There is very little traffic and not as many tourists. The locals are nice and friendly. This is more our speed.
Spring was surprised to learn that even though we were traveling for much of the day we still managed to walk 13 kms.
We have booked into The Shrewbury Inn for 3 nights.
The floor of our room has a definite slope to it. We are getting used to that feature.
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