Today, the weather Gods smiled upon us! When we woke and looked out on the world (well, the Long Mynd) we saw clear blue skies and sunshine, with visibility clear for several miles. It wasn’t a day to waste, so as soon as we’d scoffed some toast washed down with coffee we donned our walking gear and headed down into Church Stretton. After a brief stop to pick up some goodies from Steele’s family bakery (their chocolate brownie is excellent, as is the fruit flapjack) we headed up to the Burway before striking off across country to follow the town brook path uphill.
Not a place you want to get trapped on in winter.The town brook burbles adjacent to the footpath towards Long Synalds – on the lower sections anyway, after that, the footpath begins to gain height. – as this view shows! Here, we’re looking back towards Church Stretton with Caer Caradoc on the horizon and the Devil’s Mouth in the mid-distance. Having made it up to 425 meters we swung round to the South side of Townbrook valley in order to get to look back over the valley and towards the North. Looking back down over Church Stretton with Caer Caradoc to the left. One of the ‘wild’ horses that can be found wandering the Long Mynd. They’re not actually wild, but the area is common grazing land.Looking West across Yearlet towards Long Synalds. This time of year the colours are amazing as all the bracken is dying back. Dawn atop Ashlet just before we began our descent to Ashes Hollow and the footpath towards Little Stretton. What a contrast in weather, we’d have been in cloud level with zero visibility if we’d been up here over the past few days! Considering it’s nearly mid November temperatures were a balmy 12 degrees, with very little wind. Almost there! We’ve followed Ashes Hollow and the stream to the edge of Little Stretton. This house is the first sign of human habitation, but still within the area managed by the National Trust.
Having been walking for several hours we made a welcome pitstop at the Green Dragon pub. This friendly little pub serves a good selection of real ales and decent ‘pub grub’. I treated myself to the scampi (because it’s not something I’d cook at home) whilst Dawn plumped for the fish and chips.
Scampi, chips and peas with Tartare sauce. I felt I’d earned it!
Fed and watered, we continued our walk back into Church Stretton and home via another pitstop in our ‘local’ the Kings Arms. Now we’re back at the ranch, relaxing and wondering what tomorrow will bring. This Shropshire sojourn is coming to an end, we leave in the morning to head back to West Yorkshire, but the weather forecast is promising torrential rain for most of the journey – bar a small window in the morning that we may be able to make the most of en-route. Let’s see what happens…
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We knew the weather forecast had predicted wet weather today, so we were in no hurry to rush out of the house this morning. Even so, I was up not long after 07:30 in order to throw back the curtains and greet the day. It scowled back, making me wish I hadn’t bothered! This is how the view across to the Long Mynd looked.
I’d had half and idea to wander down into the village to get pictures of passing trains but driving rain make me think twice and the idea of staying in the warm and dry seemed much more attractive. So, whilst Dawn was at her toilette, I prepared porage with coconut flakes, fresh blueberries, sultanas and served with honey. After all, it was the weather for comfort food!
We’d planned to catch the 11:30 train down to Ludlow in order to spend a few hours exploring the town but the weather was so crap we decided to take the car instead as that way we’d have some flexibility. It turned out to be a wise decision.
The journey down along the A49 wasn’t too bad apart from heavy traffic and HGVs – hardly ideal on a road where the verges were beginning to resemble linear ponds. That said we made it into town just as the rain eased, which made our explorations easier – although conditions meant my camera stayed in its bag for most of the day. Rather than sightseeing we ended up shopping – a pastime neither of us are particularly fond of – but Ludlow possesses a branch of one of our ‘go to’ clothes shops, ‘Fatface’, so that’s our Xmas presents sorted then! As our purchases came in paper bags we were rather limited after that, who wants soggy bags spilling their contents all over the road? We decided to cut our wandering short and plumped for lunch instead, visiting a place we’d eaten at earlier in the year, Kin Kitchen. where we both plumped for the same thing – the fish platter.
Having eaten, and with the rain renewing its onslaught we dropped off our purchases in the car before heading to the Ludlow Brewing Co, whose brewery is located in an old railway goods shed adjacent to the station. The interior’s very modern and their range of beers excellent. The modernity’s contrasted by two amazing models of the old Ludlow town halls (both now demolished). The Victorian version lasted for just 100 years. It was flattened with indecent (and suspicious) haste in 1986. From descriptions it sounded like an amazing space, which had covered market on the ground floor but a spung dancefloor above. It had survived it would have been a real asset, compared to the sad market that exists today, where a few temporary stalls huddle together, looking rather lost amongst the fine buildings surrounding them.
Here’s a couple of shots from the pub;
The model of the Victorian town hall.
Whilst we were visiting I did manage a couple of railway shots. Locomotive-hauled services have disappeared across most of the UK nowadays but this line sees several such services operating between Cardiff to Holyhead and Manchester, using cast-off intercity coaches and hired-in locomotives that were built to haul 125mph mail trains.
67010 propels 1W57, the 10:53 Cardiff Central to Manchester Piccadilly out of Ludlow station, past the Ludlow Brewing Co on the left.
Oh, there’s another trick to these loco-hauled services. Some of them offer fine dining! They carry an onboard chef who prepares gorgeous 3-course meals on board. Watch out for a blog about this in the future.
As the rain was relentless we decided to cut our losses and head home to have a quiet night at Bigland Towers in exile, enjoying some home cooking with creature comforts. Tomorrow’s our last full day her and the forecast looks very different to what we’ve seen so far. We’re planning to stay local and maybe get a walk in – depending on conditions. We need to make the most of it before we head back on Friday when we have a yellow weather warning for (yet more) rain.
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The view from our accommodation when I threw back the curtains at 07:15. The Long Mynd is up there in the clouds somewhere! I wandered down to Church Stretton station for an hour in-between showers, where I managed a couple of pictures. Here’s a Transport for Wales service from Cardiff en-route to Manchester Piccadilly via Shrewsbury. A pair of the old BR built Class 153s were working a Shrewsbury to Swansea service via the Heart of Wales line. 153382 led 153352 South of the station past autumnal colours. By the early afternoon we’d decided to abandon soggy Stretton for the delights of Shrewsbury. The weather wasn’t any better, but there were far more places to explore or seek refuge in! This Cardiff-Manchester service did the honours. Ironically (having returned from Manchester) the same set took us back to Stretton several hours later!Shrewsbury’s replete with history, but you need to keep your eyes open, otherwise you’d miss plaques like this one on Fish St. Half-timbered Tudor era buildings are ten a penny in Shrewsbury. Here’s one that’s had a lot of TLC – the 15th century Henry Tudor Inn, located in Barracks Passage. Rather than being rammed with identikit food and other outlets Shrewsbury has lots of independent shops, like this craft bakery.There’s lots of old shop fronts which display goodies like this. Here’s Appleyards on Wyle Cop, opposite Shrewsbury Orthodox Church.
By later afternoon we’d had enough of dodging the rain so caught the train back to Church Stretton where we had time for a drink in the Kings Arms before adjourning to have acelebratory meal at Sawaddee Thai Restaurant in the Square. It was our wedding anniversary after all! Sawaddee is a cosy (around 30 seat) family run restaurant. The food was very good and not just spiced for English palates. We shared a Thai fishcake starter, then Dawn had the Paenang curry whilst I had the hotter Jungle curry (both with chicken). The mains were £9.95 and really tasty. We also split a coconut rice between us.
Thai fishcakes with dipping saucesJungle curryPaenang curry.
The chili rating on the bottom of the menu made us both chuckle!
Now we’re kicking back at our accommodation. Tomorrow’s weather’s not expected to be up to much, so the plan is to catch the train to Ludlow and enjoy wandering the town. Watch this space…
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After a hectic week and weekend which has seen me up to my neck in judging stations and photographs for the 2026 Community Rail Awards we’ve breezed into a new week which sees the pair of us taking some time off. It’s our wedding anniversary on Tuesday so we thought we’d get away for a few days. We’d planned to visit Rome, but neither of us had time to plan things the way we’d have liked, so we’ve opted for plan B by returning to somewhere we know well – which means we can relax. Instead of the eternal city we’re heading back to Shropshire to spend time in Church Stretton and the Shropshire hills AONB – somewhere far less built up and chaotic! But first, we’ve got to get there…
Church Stretton seen from the Long Mynd during our visit in October 2021. Hopefully we’ll be able to get to walk places like this again, but the weather forecast doesn’t look too promising, so it’s time to pack the waterproofs!
14:00.
We’re on our way! We had a few chores to finish before we departed so we didn’t leave Halifax until 12:30. Right now we’re on a busy M53 heading towards Chester after traversing the M62 and M6 – which were chokka with traffic – and wet, which added to the fun!
Now the skies are clearing…
16:10.
We resisted the temptation to stop en-route, which has meant we’re now settled into our home from home here in Church Stretton. We stayed in the same place in April and loved it so much we promised ourselves we’d return. Here’s Bigland Towers in exile.
The 1st floor living room has a view looking acoss to the Long Mynd.Looking in the opposite direction towards the kitchen and bedroom.Our hosts left us a welcoming treat – and there’s even a couple of real ales in the fridge!
20:10.
And relax! Having established ourselves in our new surrounds it was time to walk into town in order to explore, pick up some shopping – and stop for a drink in our favorite pub, the Kings Arms.
Wooden beams aplenty. The pub is an old gem – but the narrow frontage belies just how big it is inside.The pub is run by Joules, a brewey based in Market Drayton, here’s a selection of the real ales on offer.
The pub also serves food, which seems very popular. We were tempted by the battered onion rings which turned out to be fish-flavoured as they’d been fried in the same oil as previous foods. It certainly made for an ‘interesting’ combination of flavours!
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Sorry for the lack of blogging recently, but it’s been a dull but busy week here at Bigland Towers. I’ve been going nowhere fast due to work commitments which have kept me tied to home. Now’s the time of year when I put my sorting hat on as one of the Community Rail Awards judges. There’s a huge amount of entries in the two categories in which I’m a member of the judging panel so it takes a lot of time to sift through them, giving our individual scores before we convene for the full judging panel.
Mind you, the weather’s been utter crap here in the Calder Valley. Most days I’ve not even been able to see the opposite side of the valley. Taking my daily stroll through the woods has been ‘fun’ too as some major branches have been brought down by the wind and rain, so you take your life in your hands. Fortunately, I’ve never been in the wrong place at the right time!
The evenings have been entertaining in a different way due to it being the week of Bonfire night, which has meant we’ve had fireworks going off every day so the place sounds like living in a suburb of Beirut or Damascus (only without the ricochets). Still, the valley’s looked very pretty with a fusillade of fireworks lighting up the sky each evening.
Now the week’s winding down. I was hoping to get out and about tomorrow but I fear I still have too much paperwork to do – and the weather’s not looking much better, even though it’s been incredibly mild for the time as year. That said, Dawn’s taking next week off as it’s our weeding anniversary and we’ve just booked a few nights away in Shropshire – so all’s not lost.
Hopefully, I’ll have time to catch up on some more blogging tomorrow, in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a taster of the weather here today. For much of the day we’ve been living just below cloud level…
The Wainhouse tower above the end of our road disappears into the clouds.
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Think you can trust Artificial Intelligence (AI) to answer questions factually, find accurate statistics or tell fact from fiction, truth from lies? Well, think again.
Right-Wing Billionaire Elon Musk has built ‘Grok’, an AI platform used on ‘X’ (better known as Twitter) which has also been rolled out across the internet. It’s billed as;
‘a free AI assistant designed by xAI to maximize truth and objectivity. Grok offers real-time search, image generation, trend analysis, and more’.
Maximise truth and objectivity eh? What a grok of shit!
Over the past 3 days ‘Grok’ has shown this claim to be an absolute travesty of the truth. It started with the terrible events on board an LNER train which resulted in 11 people being stabbed. Grok immediately claimed that multiple passengers on board had given ‘eyewitness accounts’ that the perpetrators had shouted ‘allau akbar’ as they rampaged through the train.
It was a lie. The ‘evidence’ was a handful of X accounts claiming to have been passengers. Grok swallowed that whole then regurgitated it and amplified it, giving those claims credence. Then an AI generated picture was posted. It’s clearly a fake. Grok claimed it was real.
Dozens of people pointed out it was fake – and a bad one at that. The train interior’s wrong, the time of day’s wrong, the location’s wrong, the suspect’s ethnicity is wrong. In short – everything’s wrong.
Initially, despite the obvious glaring errors Grok tried to argue the picture was genuine.
Then it started to backtrack under the weight of humans calling it out. Eventually, the originator of the AI fake admitted it was fake!
Grok finally admitted the picture was AI, but resolutely refused to admit it had been conned by fake witnesses claiming shouts of ‘allau akbar’. Instead, it obfuscated, saying the attack itself wasn’t in doubt, but no-one had questioned that, so why keep mentioning it? Needless to say, some humans were rather scathing about this.
So, who does Grok consider reliable sources (other than non-existent passengers). Here’s a list. Spot the problem? They’re all from the far-right and have a long history of peddling misinformation and hate. But Grok has been programmed to accept them as reliable. So much for trying to ‘maximize truth and objectivity‘.
The timestamps claim is a curious one as timestamps are worthless. All they show is something was posted at the time of the event. They tell you nothing about where that person (or bot) is posting from. So, Grok claims the passengers are genuine ‘cos the posts are made during the event but won’t tell you where in the world they’re posting from. That’s an illustration of how easy it is to con Grok.
Fast forward 2 days when another person asks again about the fake picture. Grok’s reply?
The irony? Grok claims that it ‘remembers’ conversations. Really? So why’s it contradicted itself, forgotten that it’s already admitted the pictures an AI fake and doubled down on the lie to the extent it’s denying the creator of the AI picture admitted it was a fake. I mean, if they’re not ‘credible evidence’, what is?
Needless to say. Grok spreading and amplifying misinformation has not gone un-noticed. Nor has the fact it has amnesia and conveniently ‘forgets’ what its said just a day (or even a few hours) before.
Then, today, came this absolute doozy! Grok had defamed Pete Wishart, a member of the Scottish Parliament, calling him a ‘rape enabler’.
Wishart pursued this, leading to Grok’s programmers having to issue a fulsome apology.
Only for Grok to deny it had issued any such apology just a few hours later when I questioned it!
The claim that Grok is ‘designed by xAI to maximize truth and objectivity‘ is a joke. It’s quite literally a grok of shit.
Musk’s pet is quite clearly programmed to reinforce far-right narratives, amplify misinformation and obfuscate when caught out and questioned. It can’t tell truth from lies fact from fiction – and it has (Musk’s) agenda at its heart.
Do not trust it – on anything.
UPDATE:
After I included Wishart in the exchange where ‘Grok’ denied issuing an apology, it seems he’s taken it further and the story has made the Scottish papers!
Meanwhile, Grok continues its sorry story of mis-identification. Now it’s wrongly identified a Berlin U-Bahn train as being on the London Underground, presumably to fit in with Musk’s vendetta again London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan and his claims the city is unsafe.
London Underground trains plastered with window motifs of the Brandenburg Gate? Yeah, right…As for that seat moquette, Oh, please!
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Paul Bigland 