Across the border to Hereford

 May 9th  Warm (22 degrees) and fine.   

This morning the cooked breakfast was at last a more manageable size and Delicious!   We set off at around 8:45 across what look to me like moors.  Certainly tussock etc and at an elevation of 500m it was chilly to get out and take photographs.   

Then a magical descent into the Tanat Valley, hopping from one quaint village to another. 

 The names were totally unpronounceable  to me - Pen y Garnedd and my favourite Llanfyllin.  Little Sister is very conscious of those travelling behind so kindly pulls over to let them pass, as often as she can.   We had many such “kindness stops” today as there was certainly more traffic.   

We made a brief stop at a random post office to mail some postcards.  It will be interesting to see if Royal Mail can find them and deliver to NZ!

We knew we were over the border when the signs began to have more vowels at regular spaces in the words and less double consonants.   Then abruptly the A490 was closed to traffic and we had difficult conversations about U turns with Lady Satnav until she gave up and we travelled into Shropshire, then into Worcestershire and finally into Herefordshire on the A49 having lost a zero somewhere.   A meandering which added around an hour to the journey but took us through ‘jig saw puzzle’ village scenes and acres of yellow rapeseed fields. 

 Village and town names are so different to home; such as Much Wenlock, Craven Arms, Tenbury Wells,  Bishops Castle and then we both exclaimed with a touch of nostalgia “ there’s Marton”   So some things do remain the same.

At Ludlow Farm we stopped at the Farm Shop and Cafe for a pot of tea and some treacle flapjack.   It was a thriving hub with cafe, shop, gin distillery, art centre and a large car park.   After a brief rest we followed  Lady Satnav’s direction into the heart of Hereford and parked for free at our accommodation for the night.   Then walked for 20 minutes into the centre of Hereford.   The skyline has several large church spires but we were aiming for the square medieval tower on the famous cathedral.   Nothing quiet about Hereford today, the central streets were all closed off and full of sideshows and amusements and candy floss ….and noise!   It was pleasant to enter the quiet of the Cathedral Close and have a late lunch at their cafe where I could finally fill up on fresh vegetables as they had a wonderful array of salads.   

Then it was on to Mappa Mundi and The Chained Library.   Housed in a separate but contiguous wing of the Cathedral in a climate controlled area was a display of medieval books, manuscripts and of course the famous Mappa Mundi itself.

Drawn on vellum in around 1300 it depicts the world and universe as the people of the time understood it.  Jerusalem is at the centre so The East is the top half of the circle and Europe in the bottom left quadrant, with Africa in the bottom right.   Many of the illustrations are taken from Biblical stories such as Lot’s Wife looking back, The Tower of Babel, The Crucifixion etc   This is a link to the very informative website.   There are many strange and exotic animals - depictions of how the people of the day saw them.   Keen eyed sailors from Africa are drawn having four eyes!   Inside the circle the notations are in Latin while the wording on the outside of the circle is Anglo Norman and thus closer to French as we know it.   Until a few years ago this treasure was displayed in the Cathedral uncovered and for that reason the area of the British Isles that shows Hereford is very smudged with so many people pointing out “we are here”.  Now it is all protected under glass.

Next the Chained Library.   

Originally books were stored flat and carried about as extremely precious items in large coffin sized Book Chests.  Subsequently some wise man realised that storing books on their sides was possible but anxious about pilfering in a time when the materials were expensive and hard to come by, the idea of chaining the cover to the shelf and providing a ledge to rest the book on while it was being read, was developed.   And so the chained library was created overseen by The Master of the Library.   Ancient books with pages of vellum and elaborate illuminated lettering are housed here and a dark suited man, looking something like a funeral director paced the floor ensuring that no visitor dared do anything wrong.   A knowledge of Latin may have helped me but the ancient type style (print style) is certainly hard on the eyes.  I can’t imagine how they read such print by candle light.

The Hereford Cathedral has a great history.  A place of worship has been on the site since the 8th century.   Tombstones from the graveyard have been “rehomed” into flagstones in the courtyard.   Inside the Cathedral itself was a splendid pipe organ, amazing stained glass windows depicting both Biblical scenes and also row upon row of ancient knights., effigies reposing on raised sarcophagus, and a brightly coloured Shrine of Ethelbert, King of Kent around 589.