Floreat Salopia

November 25, 2012 (Last Modified: July 11, 2021)

Floreat Salopia_ meaning May Shropshire flourish a fitting start of this blog post dedicated to my latest locum job that has taken me to Shrewsbury , the capital of Shropshire . I have never been to Shropshire before and it really was something I needed to amend as it hides some really amazing gems. The most charming, in my opinion, is the before-mentioned medieval capital, about the size of Maribor , that has hundreds of grade listed buildings and lovely narrow streets. A lot of streets are cobbled and most of the medieval houses have not one straight line on them. Some look more like they will fall down any minute. Probably all due to the fact that the modern spirit level wasn’t invented until the 1920s.

I love the fact that the city centre shops seem to be thriving, most of them lovely individual private shops, not part of any large corporations. I can’t even remember seeing any empty shop window.

One weekend day I drove round the area and stumbled upon the small village of Ironbridge , home of the first arch bridge made out of cast iron built in the 1770s. This village, like, Shrewsbury has a lot of inviting individual shops, one of them especially caught my eye called Bear on the Square . It boast over 3000 items on sale and I can tell you for sure that most of them are teddy bears ;-) I did see an almost life size chicken, though :-D

I was reading up on the Shrewsbury Wikipedia page and found out it used to have a nuclear fallout warning station. It turns out it now houses a veterinary practice - in fact the veterinary practice I was working at as a locum. They made the walls extra thick and reinforced so no wonder I was not able to get a damn signal on my mobile phone all the time I was working there. They did have a branch surgery in a village called Shawbury and luckily that place wasn’t built to withstand a nuclear bombs so no problem with updating my Facebook status. Probably because there was a large RAF helicopter base next door the mobile signal was excellent. Thanks MOD :-)