July 23 Shrewsbury to Pembroke

Hello everyone,
This morning as we were having breakfast in our Shrewsbury B&B our hostess Jo told us about some of the Shrewsbury sights that we should not miss, so we set off for a walk along the beautiful river bank and visited a stunning garden in the centre of town called Dingle Gardens with fantastic displays of seasonal flowers, blossoms and foliage, and manicured lawns, well worth the visit. On the way back to the car we visited two churches, St Chad's Church, a lovely church with the body of the church built in the round, then Shrewsbury Cathedral. Sabine can elaborate a bit further on this Roman Catholic cathedral which was begun in 1853. After this we got back to the car and headed off to a village called Much Wenlock which is a very lovely old English village with narrow streets and a busy marketplace in the centre. The place was very busy and there was a long queue at the bakery as it is famous for its products. We then continued on towards Ironbridge which is beautifully set within a steep valley, but is most famous for its bridge which was the first iron bridge ever built (hence the name of the town) and then came to the Victorian village of Blists Hill which in the 19th century was a busy coal mining town and which also was a major iron manufacturing centre with blast furnaces, wrought iron manufacturing, and clay mining and brick manufacturing. All these activities had pretty well ceased by early 20th century and much of the buildings and equipment were removed or demolished. Since the 1970's the village has been recreated and now is a working museum where life is lived and demonstrated as it was in Victorian times. The weather was beautiful and we stayed for a couple of hours. We then set off for Pembroke in Wales, we drove westward through mid Wales and the countryside was stunning, each corner revealed even more beauty. We reached the Welsh coast ay Aberystwyth and the headed south along the beautiful coastline towards St David's which is Britain's smallest city with a large Cathedral. The cathedral was being readied for a concert that evening so we could not see inside. We finally arrived in Pembroke just after 7.30 and found our B&B. There was also the Bishop's Palace which lay in ruins not sure when it was built probably 1000 or so years ago. Sabine will add in the info re Shrewsbury Cathedral in the next blog.