The advantages of off-roading

Saturday 18 April - We decided two weeks ago to rent a car for this weekend while the rates were good and to hope for the best. Luckily, the weather cooperated and we had a great weekend exploring the countryside. On Saturday our destination was a village in Wales, Hay-on-Wye, known for its many second-hand book shops. However as we were making our way to Wales we made the spur of the moment decision to turn off to see the historic village of Ledbury (although this decision upset the sat. nav. we had borrowed which repeatedly told us to turn around and even said that we were no longer on a road a some points we ignored its commands and valiantly explored the unintended). Ledbury is a lovely medieval style town with a central market hall on the high street. We explored a number of shops along the high street, and admired the many tudor buildings, many with intricate and impressive glass paned rooms (we also passed, strangely enough, quite a few butchers) then took a detour up a small side alley where we stumbled across a small two-room museum crammed with historic artifacts and curiosities. We continued up the alley to the church. The Church had lovely, well kept grounds with many flowers and flowering trees. Inside there were quite a few treasures as well. The stained glass was remarkably intricate and lovely. There is also a recreation of the last supper painted from the original (before its restoration). After leaving the church we made our way back down the alley to a small tea shop where we sat in the back garden and had a pot of tea with crumpets and jam. After our yummy restorative we finished our tour of Ledbury High street (and a few interesting side streets and a number of well planted parks) before hopping back in the car and taking another brief detour to view Eastnor castle (a Georgian era castle which we were only able to view from the exterior as it is not yet open for the season). The Countryside in this area was quite beautiful with lots of rolling hills, open fields and stone houses.