Sunday, 29 June 2008

Following the Olympian trail around Much Wenlock

Thelma & I have spent a glorious afternoon following the Olympian trail around Much Wenlock. It is a beautiful little town full of history and lovely buildings. The modern day Olympic Games originated here in the 1850's organised by a local doctor - Dr William Penny Brookes. We combined the visit with geocaching and followed a series of 8 clues around the town which lead us to a final cache.

Much Wenlock is such a beautiful little town, that it was a real pleasure to explore it today ( luckily we did today as the main road into the town is going to be closed tomorrow for 6 weeks for essential maintenance so I think it may become a ghost town - all the retailers are certainly worried about their trade)
This beautiful old building used to be the town gaol - see the iron bars on the windows and the whipping post with attached shackles!

Here are some of the other beautiful buildings.


This is the railway station - now a private house. Much Wenlock had a railway very early on in the development of the railways - which used to bring visitors to the Olympic games - the wording was that 'they travelled at their own risk'! The railway is long gone now.


This is the row of Poplar trees that Dr Brookes planted around the Linden Field where the Olympic games took place - now a school field, but still used for many sporting activities -Liam took part in a cross country event there once and had an awful asthma attack - so we did not ever return.
Our geocache trail started off at the Priory ruin. It is owned by English Heritage so you have to pay to go in. We did not have time for that today but the little bit we could see of it over the walls looked very impressive and I will certainly come back for a proper visit to it. We ended up here at this windmill - minus its sails on the outskirts of town

No comments: