Had 2020 been a normal year, I would have gone on a summer holiday to Germany for the third time. The trip would have been following the route of the Romantic Road, through places like Würzburg, Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Dinkelsbühl, places which sound wholesome and cute. As we all know, 2020 has been a little bit tricky, so instead the decision was made at Holiday HQ to travel through the West Midlands. You read that right, the West Midlands. I am from that part of the world but have never thought to spend time there for leisure.

Lonely Planet describes the region as having “green valleys, chocolate-box villages of wonky black-and-white timbered houses” and the promise was delivered and then some. The countryside we saw was soothing, verdant, with hints of a wilder edge in the Malvern Hills. We visited Ledbury, Leominster, Ludlow and Ironbridge and every destination had timber-framed buildings a plenty, inviting pubs, a local approach to food and usually a castle within spitting distance. “Please stop spitting at the castles” is the region’s catchphrase.

It was quite novel having a holiday 90 minutes from where my family live, so I took the opportunity to invite Mum to spend the day in Ledbury with us. We hadn’t seen each other since the very day the lockdown was announced back in March. In Ledbury, we stay at The Feathers. The building dates back to 1565 and is a perfect example of the architecture of the time. It creaks and crackles with most stairs lurching pleasingly to a slope that makes you feel drunk while sober and sober when drunk. In our room, the floor went down into a corner and I sort of found myself falling towards it no matter what I did. The bathroom looks fresh out of the 1980s  and the framed pictures in the bedroom have seen better decades but for £45 a night, the hotel is far nicer than the price would suggest. The restaurant and coffee house all retain a lot of the features that make the building memorable, but the coffee house’s blue light around the ceiling is less than fitting.

It’s a pity to report that the Sunday roast at The Feathers is average because to me, a roast is a high stakes meal and should leave you in no fit state to do anything but rub your belly and groan in a happy way. Instead, I was merely quite full and while nothing was wrong with the food, it lacked character. For £18.50, I would have expected more. My Mum did say her crumble was excellent, and the iced coffees are good, so it’s not a disaster. In a welcome twist, breakfast the next morning was genuinely good.

Ledbury is all centred around the market house and up the set-piece medieval Church Lane which is marvellously photogenic from any angle. On the street you have Butcher’s Row House museum and at the top of the lane stands St Michael and All Angels church, which has existed there in some form since the 11^th century. After our stroll around the town and it being August, a Sunday and in the covid-era, we wandered what we could do, so we went to the riverside park. After all the beautiful buildings of Ledbury, it was a pleasure to get to the park via an industrial estate which featured some stunning tin roofs. It’s quite the historical tour of industrial buildings of the last 50 years and is not to be missed, unless you’ve anything else at all to do. The park is a thin sliver of land between the river Leadon and a main road but there are some reasonably diverting sights such as a tree that clings onto the river bank, showing you the roots spreading out alarmingly. Beyond the riverside park you can head out into open country that looks gorgeous with cows roaming about. We spotted Sixteen Ridges vineyard in the distance, but it was closed.

In the evening, we went for a second walk and headed out to Ledbury Park, but it turned out that this was private so we kept finding gates telling us to go elsewhere. It’s bit of a downer because there’s so much nice land in Ledbury but finding a path you can walk on takes longer than it should. So we trudge back to town, find another private path and eventually find a space we can wander around, which is an almost vertical climb so we abandon that as well. Finally, past the Police station we find a path that takes us through some fields abuzz with bees and we end up in Dog Hill Wood where we spot someone looking out over the town all alone. It always seems to me that anyone sitting alone on a viewpoint must be a murderer, but we didn’t see any legs sticking out of the undergrowth.

After this somewhat distorted walk we go to the highly atmospheric Prince of Wales pub on Church Street. They’d gone covid-mad and every single table had plastic screens that separated people apart from each other but not separating us from strangers. I had seen these sort of screens splitting people up in Italy but Italians quickly figured out that this was ridiculous and scrapped it. We, like everyone else in the pub, discreetly slipped the screen out of the way as talking through a plastic screen is rubbish and we supped our very nice German beer in a semi-anxious state. They didn’t bother with track and trace and had a system where you ordered your drink and signed your signature with a pen other people had used. I guess we’d spritzed our hands with hand gel but still, great pub, shame about the inconsistencies. And if a breakout happens there, I’ll never know.

Day two in Ledbury marked day one of Eat out To Help Out so we went for a taxpayer-subsidised breakfast at Cameron and Swan, which sounds like the setup to a political joke, but in Cameron’s case it was a pig. And the first thing to note is that this is a place that does track and trace very well. Perspex separates different groups of customers, with hand sanitiser on entry and someone to take your details. If you wanted to go to the loo, you had to put your hand up so you’re not confronted with the horror of bumping into another human. I had the full English, which is most of anyone’s daily calorific needs, but it was kept very healthy by the half tomato and beans. Why do cafes feel the need to only put half a tomato on a place? Would an entire tomato ruin appetites? When I was in a hotel in Warsaw, I noticed that room service breakfast charged the equivalent of 50p for half a tomato. The mind boggles. My partner had some sort of salmon concoction and was very pleased. Gold star!

After the meal we had a stroll in the walled garden by Church Street and it was blissfully calm and quiet. I could have sat there for days. I was excited to visit Hus and Hem, a Scandinavian design shop which for reasons unknown thought that Ledbury was the place to sell their delightful goods. I bought a friend some chocolate covered liquorice (Salmiaki) before we headed to the only museum open in the town. The painted room is a small, er, painted room and when renovating the building in the 1990s, a decorator stripped away some wallpaper to find some unexpected marks on the walls. It turns out that they had come across a 500 year old painting that was hidden under hundreds of years of renovations. The design was that of a knot garden and it is simply remarkable that the painting is still so bright today, with easily readable extracts from the bible. The guide was super, miming along to a covid-friendly audio recording of her talk, and she was dressed in suitable attire, hiding her face mask under a lacy veil. There was something very 2020 about this visit; usually, I wouldn’t find much of a thrill in somewhere like the painted room but being able to go back into a museum was still something to be savoured. And really, it is remarkable that people in the Tudor times were painting on a wall I was standing in 500 years later, taking photos on my digital devices.

After a good lunch at the Seven Stars, we set off on a walk to Eastnor, despite Eastnor Castle being closed. We head to Coneygree wood, on the edge of Ledbury and we experience that great moment of the traffic sounds being entirely muffled by the trees. Soon all we hear is our feet crunching on the ground and the birds gossiping about us in the trees. The woods felt ancient, with vines creeping up everything they could and before long we were walking through open fields ringed by the enchanting trees and great views of the Malvern hills. After about 45 minutes, we come across a settlement of pheasants rummaging about, making alarmed noises and having fun with their friends. When we arrive in Eastnor, we see the Church covered in scaffold and not much else. A look for another route back via the fields was essential as the fine folk at Google only suggest routes that would have us as flat as roadkill if we misjudge the traffic on the roads. Luckily, there’s another route that takes us in a loop back to Ledbury, via fields of sleeping sheep that brings us out near Dog Hill wood.

In the evening we have dinner at the Olive Tree restaurant. Our original plan of eating at a Thai/Chinese restaurant is scuppered by them only doing takeaway. The only person inside was a very stressed out looking woman wondering where everyone was. Luckily, the Olive Tree had one table left inside, where people usually wait for takeaway. On this table we were able to hear the presumed owner bemoan his full restaurant, saying Eat out to Help out was a disaster. I couldn’t sympathise. He was making money and we got to eat two mains with drinks for £20. While I thought my hake risotto was great, the menu was so absurdly long, it made me wonder why restaurants don’t just do a simpler range of things excellently. But I don’t run a restaurant, so what do I know.

My adventures in Ledbury end here. It’s a fine town, with much to commend it. I had moments of real pleasure and relaxation but the closures from coronavirus definitely made this a less compelling visit than it could have been. Had we hired a car, the Malvern hills would have been ours for the taking. Next time maybe, but my trip continues to beautiful Ludlow.