17/03/2024
Extracted from an article on, 'The best places to live in the U.K.' in the Sunday Times today:
"The bold option is quirky Bishop’s Castle. More handknit than Gore-Tex, it’s a town bursting with character behind its rough-and-ready façade. From houses painted with spots or a giant zip and an elephant-themed art trail (in honour of circus animals stabled here during the Second World War to avoid city air raids), they do things differently here. The star of the high street is the Poetry Pharmacy, a bookshop and café where bottles of poetic remedies for a broken heart or existential angst are dispensed, the words of wisdom rolled up inside pill capsules. Life is one long round of crafts, festivals and concerts, and storytelling sessions in the town hall, thanks to the energy of a population with an unconventional approach to life.
Behind the eccentric exterior, BC also scores highly on practical appeal. There’s a post office and a bank (HSBC), both endangered species in a town of this size, as well as a leisure centre with a swimming pool.
If you really want to get away from it all, tiny Clun is the place for you, beautiful, timeless and still: as the poet AE Housman wrote of Clun in his 1896 collection, A Shropshire Lad, one of the “quietest places/ Under the sun”.
