Having revisited one former home, found myself visiting the town where I spent my secondary years, only half a week later. (Reasons for this less positive, though perhaps I’ll do a separate post about that.)
Otley has its market, and Upton-on-Severn has its maps…and also morris men (though thankfully not all the time).
I used to live in Malvern, where the water comes from, and Morgan sports cars. A good place to mention with the centenary of Elgar this year – one theory suggests that the outline of the Malvern Hills was an influence on the structure of his Enigma Variations. That’s something to ponder during the ad breaks on Classic FM.
Upton, meanwhile, is a few miles away from Malvern, and tends to be good at various festivals, including folk, and jazz. The weekend when we were around happened to be one where over 100 different morris dancing troupes had gathered together, so it was testing stuff elbowing your way through the bells and floral hoops and along to the river to have your sandwiches. This is the advantage of central England – a great location for all the ‘enthusiasts’ to travel to and congregate in.
Upton also has a map shop…Mum loves maps, and with my brother about to do an extended trip to Australia and New Zealand, this was the opportunity to investigate what maps might be available.
This particular shop has previously offered maps of obscure parts of Warsaw that I would later teach in. This time, it had no difficulty in turning up a multilingual copy of a map of the Tatras Forest Park (alpine part of Poland, with the main mountains mostly on the Slovak side).
Had I wanted to go back to Legnica, where I also worked, I would have been able to buy a map of it on the spot – and of at least a dozen other small Polish towns that most people have never heard of.
(Mum incidently made it out the shop with only 4 maps, which was quite good going for a trip that she isn’t going on herself.)
I saw the map shop recently featured in a travel article, as one of the top five map shops in the UK. It stocks 55 000 items. You can also buy items online. What are you waiting for?
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