Hereford

10 August 2012

Helen was born prematurely and unexpectedly when we were visiting Roger’s parents in Hereford. She spent six weeks in an incubator in Hereford County Hospital before being transferred to Cheltenham. We had not been back to Hereford since, and Helen had never seen the city of her birth. As Helen and Roger’s birthdays both fall in mid-August we decided to put this right this year.

Friday 10 dawned fine and sunny and remained very warm all day. We arrived in Hereford at about 10.45 am. Expecting the road layout to be very different from years’ ago, we used the satnav to guide us to our chosen car park, only to find it temporarily coned off, so we had to back out into the traffic and thread our way through a pedestrianised area – much to the annoyance of the locals no doubt – in order to go round the block and into another car park.
We walked briefly through the town centre to find our bearings, then headed to the cathedral, where Teresa was keen to revisit the Mappa Mundi and the Chained Library. The cathedral (right), watched over by Sir Edward Elgar (below). Click the link to see why: Edward Elgar
	Teresa and Helen about to enter the cathedral (left). Meanwhile Roger explored the cathedral close and nearby streets, before waiting in an almost deserted cloister for Teresa and Helen to re-emerge. By the time they did, a band was setting up to play and the cloister was filling rapidly. We quickly bought ourselves lunch, managed to find the last remaining table and had a very pleasant lunch to the music of the Remi Harris Trio – an impressively accomplished programme of jazz guitar numbers. The Remi Harris Trio
A packed house enjoying the lunch time concert (above)
	After lunch we left the cathedral to see the city centre. This had changed greatly since Roger’s time here – in many ways rendering it a clone of any other small provincial town. Helen and Roger find some shade on the way out (left)
The Butter Market off High Town	Roger and Helen prepare to leave the new Maylord shopping centre for the car park
	We returned via King’s Acre Road where Roger used to live. No. 24 (left) was built on a double plot, but the second plot has been sold recently to build the adjacent smaller red brick house. The large chestnut tree has grown up from scratch in the intervening years. No 24 as it was when Roger left (right)

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