Warning: Contains Sexual Swear Words

 

For reasons far too dull to go into here, the BF had cause to be in Shrewsbury late at night.  "But wait!" I said, in that slightly annoying way that he has tolerated for nearly 28 years.  "I have to collect Shrewsbury!  We can make a trip of it!"

After a night in a perfectly lovely Premier Inn by the river, we wandered into the town centre for breakfast.  It's a little surprising to me that Shrewsbury is still a town after all these centuries.  It's been an important marketplace since the Dark Ages, straddling kingdoms of Wales and England and providing a place for both of them to meet.  It's built in a deep bend in the river Severn which gives it a valuable defensive bonus that was exploited by many fortifiers over the years.  You'd have thought it would've got city status by now, especially when you look at some of the places that have got it - look at Wrexham, for pity's sake.  It has put in bids in the past but it's never won and now that the Queen's gone, the opportunities for Jubilee anointments may have dried up.  I can't see Charlie clinging on until he gets a Golden.

Looking at Shrewsbury on the map brought back memories of seemingly thousands of Geography lessons reading about oxbow lakes.  In my head it took up roughly half the year; reading about them, drawing them, looking up at the board as the word "erosion" was repeated over and over.  I do like oxbow lakes, and always enjoy spotting them, but somehow they'll never lose their taint of sitting in front of Mr Master's desk hating his guts while he hated me back.  (That's not conjecture, by the way, he actually told my (unknown to him) best friend that he hated me because he thought I was a know it all.  I then got an A at GCSE Geography so seemingly I did know it all Mr Masters.  HAHAHA.)  Anyway, looking at that map, I wondered if global warming will one day cause the Severn to burst its banks, take the short cut it's been dying to do for millennia, and make the railway station waterfront property.    

Shrewsbury, it turns out, is a delight.  Medieval streets curl back and forth among historic buildings.  Tiny alleyways connect with cobbled byways.  There's a rise to the centre - as I discovered to my cost the previous night, when "a quick nip to Tesco" meant I had to clamber up about five flights of stairs - then down again to the riverside.  

In the centre is The Square, traditionally the home of the market until it was moved indoors in the fifties, and still with its magnificent market hall.  Around it were coffee shops and small boutiques and restaurants, plus the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.  We'd still not eaten though, so after a tour of the square, we headed into Côte for a French bistro breakfast.

The BF insisted I put this in, because he's a bitter little man, and he complained about it for the rest of the day.  We were shown to a seat in the window, the middle of three tables in a restaurant that had only one other diner on the other side of the room.  A couple then came in and picked the table next to us.  Thirty other tables and they decided that they wanted to sit next to the portly homosexuals in the window.  It was incredibly rude and made us very uncomfortable, but judging by their uptight demeanour, advancing years, and comfy slacks, we decided they were extremely Brexit and therefore a disregard for the feelings of others was to be expected.

I'll be honest.  I wasn't that bothered about all of this because I wanted to get the breakfast out of the way (nice though it was).  I'd spotted a sign pointing to Grope Lane and now it was all I could think about.  Shrewsbury has a Grope Lane, which hardly ever happens any more.  I had to visit it.

The bowdlerised story of how this street got its name is that it was so narrow, on dark evenings, you'd have to "grope" your way along it to find your way.  This is absolute nonsense.  Until the last couple of centuries, many cities had their own Grope Lane.  Except they used its full name: Gropecunt Lane.

Medieval streets were named after what you found there.  Butcher's Row.  Fish Street.  Market Square.  There was no subtlety.  And if you were a gentleman who wanted to be provided with the company of a young lady for a short while, you went to Gropecunt Lane.  It did exactly what it said on the tin.  "Cunt" wasn't an obscenity then; it was a descriptive term, if a little vulgar, and it was only as puritanism and then Victorian morals swept England that these streets lost their colour.  (Name wise only, of course; prostitution continued and thrived even under the most tyrannical moral outrages).  The oldest profession was, if not permitted, then at least ignored if it was contained in these areas.  Most of them were renamed as time went on.  London had several in its day until they became something more wholesome.  Oxford's version became Grope Lane, then Grape Lane, then Magpie Lane; Opie Street in Norwich was once called Gropekuntelane.  Shrewsbury's Grope Lane, close to the market square so that visiting traders could partake, is the last one left.  It should be celebrated.  History is dirty and reckless and, above all, human, and we should applaud the sex as much as the violence.

Grope Lane brought us out by the Bear Steps, which were disappointingly not a gay Gropecunt Lane for those of us who prefer the huskier gentleman, and behind that was St Alkmund's Church, which I initially misread as St Almond.

St Alkmund was an Anglo-Saxon royal who ended up dead and, because getting to be a saint was pretty easy in those days, he was canonised and brought to Shrewsbury in the 10th Century.  Since he was actually from Derby, this was kind of rude, and he was sent back there in the 12th Century where he has remained ever since.  I like it when English churches are named after obscure local saints.  Chester's cathedral is dedicated to St Werburgh, a woman whose existence is only really known to people in a very small area of Cheshire and Staffordshire, and that's how it should be.  Anyone can have a St Mary's or a St Peter's.  I want a Guthlac of Crowland, something that positively reeks of pious martyrdom in the face of the grimmest English winter.

We headed down Wyle Cop, past the Henry Tudor Inn where the king once stayed and which has a claim to being one of the oldest pubs in England; opposite it is The Nag's Head, whose sign claims it is a "14th century historic pub" but which never had a royal kip there so nobody cares.  "Oldest pub in England" is one of those titles that can be endlessly debated and never resolved, like "greatest Briton" or "best James Bond".  (It's Timothy Dalton, by the way).

We crossed the river for a bit, walking down streets of council housing and small apartment blocks.  We passed a vet's surgery that had once housed the Shrewsbury nuclear bunker and a pumping station museum whose next open day was "postponed".  A sign from Severn Trent Water gave a phone number to call if we saw pollution being dumped in the river, and I wondered if anyone actually answered those calls or if you were mysteriously redirected to an answering machine in a basement somewhere in Bulawayo.

Back over a footbridge and onto a long stretch of lawns and amenities provided for the good people of the town to enjoy.  It really was a lovely place to be, and both of us were enjoying it immensely.  It was sort of like Chester, only without the tremendous sense of its own importance.  Historic, compact, pretty.

The Shrewsbury School quite literally looked down on us.  Its alumni include Michael Palin, Willie Rushton and former Luton Town Chairman Nick Owen, but also an awful lot of people who have Wikipedia pages purely because they have a title.  There were facilities for the school lining the bank, and it all looked very pretty, but I once again discover that this exclusive public school has a "Controversy" section on its Wikipedia page, which the vast majority of state schools do not.  

The town returned with this piece of art which is an homage to Charles Darwin, the town's most famous son.  It's entirely abstract and so it's up to you how you interpret it, but as it's called Quantum Leap, I mainly interpreted it as a tribute to Dr Sam Beckett who sadly, never returned home.  

We'd reached the railway station by now, so I said goodbye to the BF so he could go to the car and I entered the station so I could cross it off my map.

Long term readers (hello you) may have noticed that I actually visited Shrewsbury station back in 2012.  I'd been passing through, changing trains from Wales to Chester, and I'd only managed to go outside because of a curiosity in the station's layout.  Platform 3 is accessed separately from the rest of the station, up some stairs from the forecourt, so when I'd changed trains, I'd happened to pass the sign.  This time it was deliberate and I looked forward to enjoying the actual station's beauty.

The idea was that I would head north on the train and then the BF could intercept me and we could get home.  (We had a very dull appointment to keep later that evening).  I picked Gobowen as the next station north and, as a bonus, one I'd never visited, so I bought the ticket on my app and headed into the main hall.

The Gothic exterior extends to inside with elaborate wooden decorations and a tiled floor I loved.

I might get that in my kitchen.

I looked up at the board to find where my train to Gobowen was going from.  That was where I learned it was going from... platform three.  The platform I'd already been on, that was outside the regular station.  Disappointed, I wandered back out and up the stairs.

Across the tracks, the temptations of an open waiting room (ours had been closed due to "antisocial behaviour") and a Starbucks and a toilet called to me.  Us platform three types - we were outcasts.  Unwanted by the rest of the station.  I hoiked up my collar and sulked on the sidelines.

A packed train arrived to take us onwards.  This was the train from Cardiff to Holyhead, a route that literally travelled the entire length of Wales, and as such TfW had decided it only deserved two carriages.  Unsurprisingly, it was absolutely rammed.  I was glad to squeeze off at Gobowen.

The undoubted highlight of this small station which, despite how its name sounds, is actually in England, is the shelter outside.  It's been constructed to look like a railway carriage and is no doubt an epicentre for the local teens of a Friday night.

I stood in the car park and waited for the BF to arrive.  Shrewsbury is lovely.  I'd highly recommend a visit.  Even if Gropecunt Lane has been gentrified.