It must have rained an awful lot overnight, because the roads were covered in big puddles; but the morning brought with it warm sunshine. Really warm, in fact, so you wanted sun cream on. I was quickly down to shorts and shirt sleeves and enjoyed the bonus summer weather.
I had a relatively easy day ahead of me, because I needed to be home by the evening, and that meant going no further than the last town on my straight line with a train station. That turned out to be Newtown, higher up the River Severn, about a 35 mile cycle from Shrewsbury. There was a handy train at 2.45pm, giving me plenty of time to make the journey in relaxed fashion, with a lunch stop in tiny Montgomery, just over the Welsh border. I had been here once before and liked it, so I was quite looking forward to returning with time to spare.
The Montgomery road out of Shrewsbury was pretty quiet and provided a nice view of the Shropshire hills without taking me up any of them, which I thought was most understanding. I passed through a few small villages, but nothing to distract from the cycling until my bladder did its usual late morning cycling thing and suggested that I stop soon. I reached Westbury and it seemed big enough to offer facilities, but most of the village was off to my right. I turned and crept slowly past the church yard, which I thought might have to do, but – leaning my bike on the gate – I saw to my joy a wooden door in the base of the church tower and a small sign indicating a WC lay beyond. That isn’t, in my experience, very common. How thoughtful and how fortuitous.
That was about the only excitement in a pleasant but largely uneventful morning until I crossed the border into Powys and the signs all went Welsh on me. Montgomery is an ancient place that lies high on a hill looking out over the border below. It has a ruined castle that you can wander around high above its small centre, where there is a little square with the town hall, topped by a modest clock tower, at one end. It has a few shops and a couple of cafes, but it’s a quiet place with very little traffic. A street runs downhill from behind the square and here is a small museum, a bookshop and an old fashioned hardware store that must sell almost everything. Over the two front windows are painted the words Ironmonger and Cycles. There are all kinds of items on display in metal buckets and churns outside the front windows and – best of all – a petrol pump sitting either side of the shop front, with hoses that swing out over the road. I wasn’t completely sure they were still working until a chap turned up in his car and someone came out and filled up his tank. The whole place, but especially the petrol pumps, is a relic of a bygone era.
But I needed food. One cafe was closed today and the other looked rather busy and understaffed. However, in the square was a small Spar shop and outside was a Spar garden of several wooden picnic tables, all in the warm sun. So I bought some Welsh cheese salad sandwiches and a latte and sat outside to eat. A lady with tiny twins in a double buggy was by the next table and we got chatting. As a parent of grown up twins myself, I had advice to share, although she already had a small daughter as well, which strikes me as a whole extra level of difficult. I was thinking about leaving when she showed me that one of the three buggy wheels had sustained a puncture from a big thorn. I was about to launch into an attempt to fix it, which was probably doable, when I thought of the shop around the corner. The lady knew it and visibly relaxed at the suggestion. She was sure the people there would sort everything out. It rather got me off the hook, and also meant that I could proceed with my journey in the same relaxed fashion it had started.
Moving on, I descended deeper into Wales and the Severn valley, reaching the valley bottom at the village of Abermule, where I was able to follow a lane to the banks of the disused Montgomery canal. The towpath is a cycle route and it was in good condition, which is more than you could say for the canal, which is very much not navigable. It made for a very pretty alternative to the A road and took me most of the way into Newtown.
Newtown is a pleasant little place set on the banks of the Severn, with a prominent clock tower on the corner of a central street on what much once have been a bank. A bakery provided sandwiches and cake for the journey home, during which I found myself back in Shrewsbury for 45 minutes. I used this time to pop into the sunny castle grounds, which sit right above the station in a lofty position. It passed the time nicely. And before you knew it I was home and it was time for dinner!
