Ludlow is the second location for our West Midlands holiday. It takes two trains to get from Ledbury to Ludlow, but it’s worth it as Ludlow is a wonderful town. We changed trains at Hereford which felt like an apocalyptic hellscape, with people patrolling the platforms for mask avoiders and a general feel of subdued terror. It felt very different to London. The Transport for Wales trains have big signs on almost every seat imploring you to not sit there and the announcements thanked all the key workers (my pleasure, guys) – it didn’t feel like August, but April. When we arrived in Ludlow, we head to The Feathers to check-in but are told to go far away until 2pm and that our bags cannot be handled because of covid. I get it, it’s fine. But the reception staff really seemed to take a little too much joy in flinging us out into the gutter.

Laden with bags, we trudge down the hill to Ludlow Brewery for a drink. The stuff they serve is excellent and all the staff are friendly, but the atmosphere is bleak. A baby is being fed milk in a windy, concrete garden. The old train shed that the brewery is in has no soundproofing so everything sounds eerie. Back at the hotel, the person behind reception manages to find us a room, but seems initially confused that we’re two men sharing a bed. She regains composure and asks if we want the standard queen room. Wink wink. I inform her we’ll take it, but we’re so much more than standard queens. The Feather is in a stunning building but beyond the façade of the building, most of the hotel is more recent and our room is nice, in a fairly generic way.

Ludlow is a fine-looking town but suffers from what so many ancient towns do; by covering up the gorgeous medieval buildings with plate glass windows and plastic signs, the town loses some of its lustre. A giant Natwest sign definitely lacked the olde-worlde vibes I was after. When I become Prime Minister, this will be tackled in my manifesto, as will walking slowly and putting your feet up on train seats. I did wonder if towns like Ludlow take the gorgeous architecture they have for granted. Near the Buttermarket there is a row of what appear to be Tudor buildings, but the date 1871 carved into the wood suggests otherwise. One of the buildings has a charming overhanging first floor and it’s just a great view, but it could be so much more if it weren’t for the terrible embellishments of the now – massive posters for sales and such tawdry baubles.

After a stroll around Ludlow town centre, we go into Ludlow Castle for £8 and get to enjoy some expansive views over the town and beyond from one of the towers. Every tower has a queue snaking outside it, so only groups at the castle together can go up at any one time. The benefit of this is that you get to take in the view without a kid screaming at full tilt next to you, but you have to wait an age to get to the view, what with the kids screaming up in the tower. The parents exit the tower looking distraught.

The castle is, you know, a castle. I always leave a castle wondering why I entered in the first place. Usually, I am paying to see a few information boards that say “Lord Geoff lived here, and he loved curtains” as I look at a pile of old rocks in front of me. But it adds some heft to the town and the walk by the river is glorious. We follow a route called Whitcliffe and Breadwalk. It’s called the bread walk due to the builders being paid in bread so they didn’t just get drunk all the time. How very puritanical! As we approach Dinham bridge, the view becomes one that is a reminder of just how picturesque England can be. The bridge, dating from 1823, is a simple but elegant one that features stone arches. When you stand on the bridge, you can look right and admire the weir, the small islands in the river, the old buildings that line the riverfront and the castle high up above everything. The view is made all the better by the summertime explosion of nature. The opposite side of the river is composed of a wall of trees and wonderful paths to explore. If you follow the Breadwalk route from Dinham bridge to Ludford bridge, you will reach a point where you look across and see all of Ludlow from a vantage point that is picture perfect.

In the evening, we had a big meal planned for our anniversary. The biggest meal, in fact. We went to Mortimer’s for their tasting menu which is composed of about 610 courses of food. It’s a charming venue and when you’re inside you feel totally closed off from the world outside. The best restaurants feel to me like I imagine how a Casino is. You don’t know if it’s day or night and time disappears. Though, at a good restaurant, everyone is a winner.We eat in a room that appears to be built into rock, and it’s a small dining room so every utterance like “Oh my GODDDDD” is heard by all around. The staff are magnificent in their speed and efficiency. Proceedings kick off with olives and a cocktail before we’re bought some starters. Little bites of joy. The hand dived scallop is superb and is swiftly followed by duck in three ways. There’s pressed duck, pastrami and duck liver. I steer clear of the offal but the rest is a revelation of how different duck can taste. The part of the meal I had a bit of difficulty with was the sea trout which is served raw with crab and a smattering of fish eggs on top. The more I ate the more I enjoyed; and to put this in perspective, I can’t recall eating raw fish before. The trout was so delicate with a sharp citrus twist that I found myself enjoying it more with every bite. Following this was Hereford beef, baby leeks and roast shallot which had a delicious depth to it, showing that the chef can seemingly do anything in the kitchen. The variety of food was magnificent.

After all of this, two puddings came. The best pudding was this magnificent beast that featured a scoop of sorbet with a disc of meringue daintily balanced on top. We were entirely full and I considered if it would be necessary to call a cab to take us the 100 metres to the hotel when a small box of further treats was bought out of macarons, fudge and a chocolate. It felt a bit overwhelming  and perhaps even masochistic of them to feed us more, but we ate them all. Everything was tip top and it easily slots into one of the most memorable meals I’ve experienced.

The next morning, still full of all the food from the night before, we met some friends from London who were also on a staycation. They drove us to Croft Castle and parkland, about half an hour from Ludlow. While the castle itself was closed for covid reasons, the 1500 acres of parkland more than made up for this. The walled gardens turned an overcast day into a kaleidoscope of colour and smells. Plants such as the spiky blue thing on a stick, the things you put under your chin to see if you like butter, daisies for making chains and the one that looks like a cool skyscraper (purple acanthus) are a delight to coo over. The gardens are expansive and really relaxing to stroll through.

We follow the purple route, the Highwood walk, and as soon as we walked past a recently deceased lamb, we enter a field full of ancient trees with great views over the countryside. I spot one particular tree, a Spanish Chestnut,  that I want to photograph more closely and I notice a plaque at the base which says that the Queen herself thought this was an absolutely top tree and added it to the list of Great British Trees. This was all done for the Golden Jubilee in 2002 and it’s hard to imagine one of those Spanish trees, coming over here and stealing our soil, would be granted the same accolade today.

The scenery here is wonderful, and the National Trust have done some excellent work at opening up some views but also working towards planting more native trees to recreate a woodland that would have been recognisable to people with top hats and monocles. A great part of the walk is when you start to descend into a valley surrounded by conifers, cutting you off from the world before the fishpool comes into view. After some time walking by the side of the water, we see a grotto which is held together by forces of which I do not know and then the Gothic Pump House. The pump house is over 200 years old and from the outside, looks somewhat like a spooky church that once piped spring water up to the castle. The pump house no longer works and now if you want spring water, you’ll need to get yourselves to a shop.

After the castle, we have some time to kill so visit Leominster for a brief nose around. It’s a perfectly fine town with some delightful old buildings but the only life-changing thing I can recall was Roy’s Café which proudly advertised dairy burgers with an illustration of some burger version of Rainbow’s Zippy. Quite intriguing and terrifying. Needless to say, this being a small town outside London, there was bunting everywhere, which I always feel gives off a quasi-nationalist groove. I don’t know what it is, but bunting at a wedding is fine, yet when strung across a town it just feels a bit Farage for me. After the brief delights of Leominster, we  drove for lunch at The Riverside at Aymestrey which was a beautiful pub in the middle of glorious countryside. It was the kind of pub that feels more like a special occasion venue than a local but the service, food and atmosphere were all great. There was a focus on local produce, with wild herbs from the Lugg valley, vegetables from local farms and lots of meat from the region. As an added bonus, there were plenty of good dogs, so it was essentially faultless.

Back in Ludlow, we took another stroll around the town. We had a look at the Broadgate which is the sole surviving medieval gate in the town, with the Wheatsheaf Inn growing out the side of the walls. The pub is cosy but they had some loopy covid restrictions. There was tape on the floor but no plastic screen around the bar so the lady behind the bar was relaxed until you stepped a millimetre over the red tape. People entered the pub one way and exited via the door at the far end of the bar. However, if there is an influx of customers, this system falls apart and causes a blockage of people trying to walk past all the people at the bar. Managing the situation looked like a bear trying to spin plates, which are on fire.

Ludlow is a gem of a town, even in covid-land. It has managed to maintain a lot of charm and character, thanks in part to the town being an economic backwater as the wool trade lost importance in the 19^th century. As a consequence, the town didn’t go through a period of demolition and reconstruction and today there are over 500 listed buildings in Ludlow. I would struggle to think of another English town that has quite such a density of historical buildings. I would also struggle to think of many other towns that left me feeling as content as Ludlow.