Shrewsbury Flower Show 2011

It’s tipping down with rain at the moment but I’m not complaining. We’ve had some lovely weather lately and it means I won’t have to water my plants tonight!

My daughter has gone to the Edinburgh Festival with her boyfriend. Well, she’s still in Cardiff with him at the moment, they leave later today. It will be her first flight. I hope she has a great time. I’m quite envious.

We had a lovely two days in Shropshire last week. We go every year to the Shrewsbury Flower Show in my home town sixty miles away. Now we are getting older we are finding it a bit too much to drive back after the fireworks late at night, so we stayed over. We couldn’t find anywhere in Shrewsbury itself, it tends to fill up flower show week, so we stayed in Wellington about ten miles away. I used to go there to the market when I was a little girl. I was amused by the sign from the main road which said ‘Wellington a market town since 1244’. Nowadays Wellington is virtually a suburb of Telford, a new town built in the 60s. When I was a child Telford didn’t exist. I guess they need to point out that they were there first!

After we had checked in at the hotel and were driving over to Shrewsbury I said to my husband that the last time I was on that road was when we left the town when I was 14. It turns out I was wrong as they rebuilt the A5. The road I used to know is now a B road. I had wondered why I didn’t see Uriconium, the old Roman city on the way. That explains it, they moved the road! That reminds me of that line in Psycho where Norman Bates says they used to do a good trade but they moved the highway!

In spite of the odd shower the Flower Show was wonderful, as it always is, beautiful floral displays, fascinating crafts, floral art and more; I really loved a display of steel sculptures. It’s heavenly wandering around the Dingle, a beautiful garden made from an old quarry, with the music from the brass bands floating across. Later they had a Caribbean steel band playing Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ and, would you believe, ‘Abba’s ‘I Have a Dream’! Then it was over to the arena to hear the Male Voice Choir and the bands play the 1812 Overture with firework accompanyment. The main firework display followed and was as amazing as usual, all to music nowadays.

And it was really great not to have that long drive home afterwards.

The steel sculptures

A  display of maples

The dingle lake

Enjoying the Carribean band in an English summer!