Monday 4 June - Ditherington by default

We had planned to go to Bishops Castle today but waited at the wrong bus stop so we decided to visit the old flax mill at Ditherington.  This is a short distance out of the centre in a run down part of town.
https://historicengland.org.uk/get-involved/visit/shrewsbury-flax-mill/
The flax mill is a set of large buildings the original one being the first to be built with cast iron. It is therefore billed as the world's first sky scraper. It was first used to make linen and then became a malting which closed in 1989.  The building has now been taken over by a Historic England and is being restored. It was built to be fireproof with no open woodwork.  When completed it will be an extraordinary building with great potential.

The building is not open to the public and the visitor centre is only open at weekends but the man in the office kindly opened the centre for us and ran the introductory video presentation which was excellent.  It will be worth a return in a couple of years.

We walked back into town along the Shrewsbury Canal Footpath, no canal at present but there are plans to restore it.  Along the path were many large growths of wild roses

  

We had lunch at the Armoury to use up some coupons. 

There were some longhorn cattle grazing in the fields alongside the river by the boathouses. With warm sunny weather the walk was very pleasant indeed.