Maesbury Marsh is on the slow and roundabout bus route from Shrewsbury to Oswestry, and as all the tickets for Shrewsbury Folk Festival had apparently gone, we decide to exercise our old-fogey bus passes and have a wander round Oswestry – only about three miles away as the old buzzard flies.

Dr. Google suggests there is a bus stop near the canal called “opposite The Navigation”, but there was no sign of it. Standing opposite the pub would mean you were out of sight until the bus had crossed the hump-backed bridge, and probably fail to see you. So we stayed on the Shrewsbury side of the bridge looking hopeful. A young lady came out of a house opposite, and asked if this was a good place, she said that she only ever caught the bus to Shrewsbury, not Oswestry, but reckoned it was as a good as anywhere.

We never found out. Two minutes before the bus was due, a gentleman pulled over in his car and asked if we’d like a lift into town. How nice.

Oswestry was a much bigger town than we remember from an earlier visit one Sunday many years ago, and proved a pleasant and interesting spot to while away a few hours drinking coffee, browsing and shopping, but the First Officer had forgotten to take a camera. Rather too many shoe shops, though…

Catching the bus back, our passes failed miserably, but the driver said “it sometimes does that”, and let us on. Perhaps it’s technically a Welsh bus service, and not valid for Engish fogeys. Anyway, he dropped us back in the pub car park, then crossed the bridge and immediately stopped again to pick someone up. So we still don’t know where the bus stop is.