Walking around Almeley

It was a golden afternoon. Brian had finished early in his shop, and I was outside doing a bit of weeding when he passed.
"Fancy a walk round the brickworks?" he asked.
So off we went to Almeley with the dogs.
On the edge of the village there's a railway line, with a tiny station that's no longer used, though the little house is lived in, and beside the railway line there was once a brickworks - the railway presumably being convenient to move the bricks to where they were needed. A little narrow valley runs below the railway line, with woods and a pretty stream, and cottages strung out along a narrow track. The dogs love it. It's almost like stepping back in time - none of the cottages can have been built in the twentieth century - they're all timber framed and brick infill (perhaps from the brickworks - we kept finding old bricks in the stream and embedded in the path). The path itself is part of Vaughan's Way, which is 17 miles long, between Kington and Bredwardine.
We emerged onto a tarmac road where a big timber framed farmhouse is being renovated. When we looked it up in Pevsner later, I think this must be Summer House.
The village is all spread out randomly, and a little further on we passed the Friends Meeting House, a charming little timber framed cottage which was built, according to Pevsner, in about 1672, as a meeting house. Just as we walked by, some Friends were coming out of a meeting, among them someone I know as Qlib from the discussion forum Ship of Fools! So that was an added bonus to the walk.
We ended up at the Bells pub, where I had a very nice half of Three Tuns XXX from Bishop's Castle brewery.
The pub has changed quite a bit since I first saw it, when I went in with some friends who were members of CAMRA, and found a surly landlord who hated CAMRA and blamed them because he was going to be forced to buy lined pint glasses.
The next time I went, he had gone, and a temporary landlady was there - she was lovely, and served giant Yorkshire puddings with all the meal inside them, which filled us up nicely.
And now it's a couple with children, and where one bar used to be they now have the village shop. The other bar was being treated as the family living room, where the children were watching TV, and the dogs were welcome inside. As we headed back to the car, the landlord was taking the kids out for a climb up the Twt, the castle mound in the middle of the village.
We walked back to the car, completing a full circle, past the late Medieval manor house, which is timber framed with brick infill, which gave it a nice warm glow in the evening light.
On the way back to Hay we passed through Eardisley, so we stopped at the New Strand for another half (for me) and diet Coke (for Brian). It's a warren of a place, with the cafe and bookshop and bar - where there was the most adorable Alsatian pup, who was being brought out to get her used to people. Brian always carries dog biscuits in his pocket - he gets them from the stall on Hay market - and the pup enjoyed them so much that her owner asked where he could buy them from.

That bar at Eardisley used to be the favourite drinking spot of Mr Penny, who lived at one of the sadder landmarks in Herefordshire until his death in a car accident a couple of years ago - a tumbledown old cottage at nearby Willersley. The house has just been sold, at an auction held at the New Strand, and the new owner hopes to renovate it. It'll be quite a job - it's been falling apart for years. A little while ago one of the national tabloids (the Mail, possibly) did a full page spread of photos someone had taken when they managed to get inside - the rooms are full of vintage furniture and all sorts of personal belongings and toys from Mr Penny and his brothers' childhood, coronation mugs and china, that looked untouched for years. I think Mr Penny actually lived in a caravan parked out the back. Before it was a private house, it was a pub and cider house called the Old Crow. I hope the new owner can bring it back to life.