Wednesday June 26th - 77k Circuit around Yarpole and Stretford. Sunny, high cloud, cool 6°C to 19°C
Picking up bikes from garage at B&B
English Roses are in full bloom
English roses in all colours
A Kaleidoscope of colours
Hereford cattle are everywhere
Yarpole - village of John Morgan
Yarpole is a pretty village
Lunch at Croft Castle near Yarpole
Views over Yarpole from castle
Another descendent of John Morgan's stolen sheep
Ian, I need more photos of sheep
Inside Stretford church
Good stop for beers on way home
First we have to pick up a gas can
50 metres from a nasty accident is too close for comfort. English country lanes are too narrow and English drivers are too fast. Give me French roads and French drivers any day. Today we travelled north of Hereford to visit John Morgan's villages where he worked as a farm hand either as an ostler (horse handler) brewer (there's hops up this way) or just a farm servant. We visited Stretford - both of them - there's two - and I'm not sure which is the one where John Morgan worked and also Yarpole. Croft Castle was a lunch stop over before heading back to Hereford and narrowly missing an accident.
A lazy start to the day tidying up our messy room, before going downstairs to a yummy English breakfast - hold the Black Pudding please. At 10am we're out the door and picking up our bikes stored in Bill's garage. He's keen to take a photo of us for his daughter who's also into cycling. It's a cool morning, slightly overcast, when we negotiate the A roads north of Hereford and onto a minor road through Sutton and Bodenham and on to an old Roman Road towards a village named Stretford. This was the name of a village mentioned in the documents from the Hereford Assizes where my great great grandfather John Morgan was living and working when he was convicted of sheep stealing - but there's 2 Stretford's shown on the map and i'm not sure this is THE one. We stop and ask the owner of a house if this is Stretford, as there is no name on the village and he informs us it is Stretford Bury on the eastern side of Leominster but that there is also a place called Stretford on the Western side. We chatted for a while, patted his four dogs, filled up our water bottles and cycled on, none the wiser.
On towards the main road to Leominster (pronounced Lemsta), which has a cycle path running down one side of the road, then out towards Yarpole, along tiny narrow lanes with speeding cars - not relaxing. Coffee by the roadside, before reaching the very pretty village of Yarpole with lots of English roses in full bloom. Just up the road is the English Castle of Croft where we have lunch - you guessed it - ham tomatoes and cheese - on the grass in front of the castle with views out of Yarpole and grazing lands full of sheep - any wonder John Morgan was tempted if he was hungry. It's sunny and almost hot in the sun - 19ºC, and we head off home with just one more Stretford village to visit.
Down through more country lanes to Bicton, Kingsland and finally we reach Stretford Bridge, but our map tells us we have missed the turn to Stretford, which is not marked. Backtracking, we see that the village is only two houses and a church. I check out the graveyard, expecting to see a Thomas Mason buried there - he owned the sheep John Morgan stole and must have been a land owner in the area. We chatted with an elderly couple who had stopped to visit the beautiful old church and she suggested if I find the grave I should kick it. But no Thomas Mason was to be seen amongst the old headstones.
I highly suspect that it is this Stretford village on the western side of Leominster which is the place where John Morgan lived and worked in 1832, as in Samuel Lewis' 1831 detailed Map of Herefordshire, this Stretford, not the one on the eastern side, is the only one marked.
It's after 4pm and we stop for a cup of tea by the side of the road. There's no rush to get back to Hereford - dinner is leftovers of chicken from the night before. Casually we cycle off and see a looming hill. We are only 50 metres up the hill when a car comes towards us and continues to the corner we have just turned and we hear a loud bang. I thought the car had hit a sheep that had wandered onto the road. But when we turn around and cycle back, we find that 2 cars have badly sideswiped each other, and each is almost a write off. Lucky both drivers are OK but very shaken. I'm tempted to take a photo but it's not appropriate. One driver is yelling at the other, but in fact, both were probably travelling a few inched over the centre line, as is the done thing on country lanes, and on a tight corner, have mangled.
We wait 30 minutes until help arrives, but in the meantime, all the passing cars stop to check if if all is OK, and it's so strange that everyone knows everyone else. The butcher, the baker the candlestick maker and every other person from around stop on this corner and chat waiting for one driver's Mum and the other driver's husband. Too close for comfort.
We leave after help arrives and head off to Hereford a bit shaken. Ian stops at an Aldi to buy a few beers and a dark chocolate to go with the left over chicken and we arrive back at Somerville house after a very interesting day. Dinner of left overs is great - the wine and beers even better - and we watch Federer get beaten at Wimbledon by Sergiy Stakhovsky.