There's no doubt that the best way to approach Ludlow (England's loveliest town) is from the west, along the narrow lanes that climb Bringewood Chase out of Herefordshire and so come over Whitcliffe Common. Here, the other day, we stood on the wet sward and looked down to the swirling Teme as it raced out of the Welsh borderland, picking up 100 lesser brethren that twist down through this toppled fairyland of small, untrodden hills. Pedestrians were crossing Dinham bridge, peering over the parapet at the foaming, brown water where only the bravest ducks venture into midstream at this time of year. Rearing above the bridge the massive, grey ramparts of the castle were now in full view, since a belated leaf fall pulled back the heavy curtain from the tall trees that hide these walls in summer.
The Queen' s Walk beneath those grey walls is the place where Henry VII's elder son, Prince Arthur wandered with his new wife, Catherine of Aragon, in 1501 - little changed in half a millennium. So strong was the castle' s position that it can claim the distinction of being the last Shropshire fortress to fall to the parliamentary forces in the English civil war, in 1646.
At the foot of Whitcliffe, just by Ludford Bridge, the world-famous Ludlow bone bed is visible as "a thin gingerbread layer" of dark sand containing many fragments of the earliest fish species at the place called Ludford Corner, known internationally among geologists. This strata is folded into a gentle anticline or upfold easily visible from the parapet of Ludford bridge now that all the leaves have fallen from the trees that march up this flank of Whitcliffe. Here, in 1839, Sir Roderick Murchison placed this fishy bed at the upper limit of his Silurian system, marking the beginning of a change in this region from open seas to large land areas drained by rivers.
On our way down to Ludford's medieval bridge over the Teme we left the open sward of Whitcliffe to pass through the old hanging woods overlooking the river. Here, easily found, are the trenches dug during the civil war by parliamentary troops intent on assaulting the town with cannon and muskets. Their efforts didn't have much effect because Ludlow was one of the last places in England to surrender.
