Shropshire April 2013 - Ludlow

Ludlow Castle and Dinham Bridge from Whitcliffe Common

During our week in Shropshire, based at Richard's Castle, we made two trips to Ludlow, on the Sunday and Wednesday.

A showery start on the Sunday, with some heavy showers, though still better than we’d expected from the forecast - cloudy but dry until about 2pm, instead of midday. Then wet, before clearing in the late afternoon. Wednesday was again showery and unsettled, though brighter during the afternoon.  Milder than recently.

View down the Teme from Whitcliffe

Ludlow and Titterstone Clee Hill from Whitcliffe

In Ludlow, there were a markets in the town square, at the top of the hill near the Castle. Walked down from here to River Teme, across Dinham Bridge and up onto Whitcliffe Common.  The fine grain rock was slippery underfoot. There seemed to be a clearer view from the Whitcliffe than those I’d remembered from our last visit in late 1990s. I think some trees had been cut back or cleared, but, as we saw everywhere this week, the larger trees were still weren’t in leaf. The paths seemed to have been improved, too, particularly the lower one along the river, the Bread Walk. This was repaired after being washed away by the July 2007 floods.  Coming down the steps to the river, I also noticed sign inscribed in rock about this path here being destroyed during an earlier flood, in 1886. Along the Bread Walk were concrete replicas of some of the fossils occurring in the Silurian limestones and shales of the Whitcliffe, amid a shallow tropical sea - trilobites, cephalopods with long pointy shells, brachiopods, sea scorpions, gastropods, crinoids and corals. Above the Whitcliffe Formation was the Ludlow Bone Bed, which had fossils of early fish. Views from top of the Whitcliffe, down to River Teme – the mill, weir, Dinham Bridge; and across to the town and Castle. There were also views over the Shropshire Hills. To the NW were the Longmynd and hills either side to towards Church Stretton. To the east were the Clee Hills. Titterstone Clee Hill (533m) wasthe prominent one to the south, with the wedge on top formed of a dolerite sill intruded into Carboniferous Coal Measures overlying Carboniferous Limestone and the long gentle slope of Devonian Old Red Sandstone. A white golf ball radar station near top. Also a quarry to the south, presumably dolerite. The more rounded, more distant hill to the north was Brown Clee Hill (540m), the highest hill in Shropshire. Again Old Red Sandstone on the lower slopes, overlying the Silurian nearer Ludlow. Above the ORS on Brown Clee Hill, Coal Measures and limestones as before, though less dolerite on top. On both TCH and BCH, the layers are folded into a syncline.

River Teme from Whitcliffe

Ludlow Castle wall

Back in the town, I bought some rhubarb and ginger jam from the market – the stall holder recommended having it with plain vanilla ice cream. Then looked round Ludlow Museum. 

Some glass cases in entrance hall containing a few fossils, stuffed birds and mammals of various sizes, including vole, otter, cormorant, woodpecker. In main museum, my attention mostly in gallery 3 – Ludlow / Shropshire Geology:

Murchison section - cross-section of strata, forming an anticline, to north and south of Ludlow. All Silurian age.

Wider Shrops geology: Church Stretton area – Longmynd - Neoproterozoic mudstone, sandstone, conglomerate. Sits between two faults, including Church Stretton Fault to SE. On either side of faults, Ordovician, Silurian. Wenlock Edge to SE, Stiperstones to NW.

The author on Ludford Bridge, with the former Ludlow youth hostel in the background

When returned to Ludlow on the Wednesday, I bought Peter Towgill’s Geology of Shropshire (2nd Edition, 2006). A comprehensive overview, spanning over 550 million years of geological time, from the late Precambrian (Neoprotozoic to the current Holocene period.  Good diagrams. We had another look round the town, river, Castle area and the Whitcliffe.  We had a cup of tea in a bar next to The Feathers Hotel. We also went down to Ludford Bridge. Near here, on the south side of the river, opposite the town we recognised the building which had once been Ludlow Youth Hostel. We both stayed here during the 1980s - my Cycling Man during a cycle tour of Shropshire in the early 1980s,  me during the summer recess after my second year at university in the late 1980s. I was sorry that the YHA subsequently closed this hostel during their big sell-off in the 1990s. Following another cull during the 2000s, the choice of hostels in the Shropshire, Worcestershire, Severn and Wye valleys is now much diminished. Neither of us would be able to repeat the trips we did during the 1980s, except at considerably greater expense.