The way to the Well...
Home > Shropshire
To celebrate Michelle's imminent 30th birthday, I booked a surprise weekend at St. Winifred's Well, near Oswestry in Shropshire. This Landmark Trust property is a late-15th-century well-chapel, converted into a cottage a few centuries ago. It's down a footpath not far from the Montgomery Canal, is in a beautiful secluded spot, and sleeps just two. The story goes that the bearers of St. Winifred's coffin rested here en route to Shrewsbury Abbey and the spring burst spontaneously from the ground.
I'd better not use my "well woman" joke again...
The way to the Well...
...first glimpse...
...from the back, just a sweet little cottage...but, from the front, a cottage
with a difference:
We had a glass of well water with our breakfast every morning, and very nice
it was too.
Inside St. Winifred's Well cottage.
One unwise footwear choice. We attempted to walk to the local pub in the dark
but gave up...though in the daylight it was a nice walk:
i
Shrewsbury
Treecreeper, Wren and Blue Tit, all photographed from the
kitchen window of St. Winifred's Well (the window you can see over the well
chamber in the pictures above).
Old - and rather cryptic - graffiti at Kynaston's Cave, Nesscliffe Country
Park...
...and the rock-hewn steps to the Cave. The cave entrance was barred for the
winter to protect hibernating bats - no objection to that - but the original
steps (which we used without killing ourselves) are obviously considered too
dangerous for 21st-century explorers, so a modern wooden stair-tower to the
cave entrance has been installed - just out of shot - which entirely spoils
the view and the atmosphere and makes it impossible to take a decent photograph
of the cave itself. Bah humbug.
More impressions of Nesscliffe Country Park