May has flown past in a flash and this year I feel I’ve missed much of it as I’ve been battling a stomach bug for several weeks. It’s a real pity as I think that May is the best of the months. It is the height of spring where the landscape transforms into its green lushness, so many wildflowers bloom and wildlife has an intensity like no other time of year. Stuck at home, I’ve only been able to witness the spring from the window and out in the garden.

However, I haven’t missed all of the month. Over the first weekend of May we spent three nights staying in the centre of the very lovely Shropshire market town of Ludlow. It is a quintessential English country town with a castle, tightly packed narrow streets, a market square and a wide selection of local shops and eateries; and all this inside a loop of the River Teme. We stayed in a spectacular three storey townhouse in a courtyard off the main square, with views across the rooftops and in sight and earshot of the church tower and its musical bells.

On the drive in to Ludlow, it struck me just how remote and sparsely populated this part of England is. We live in a rural village but it’s what I would term ‘near rural’; in easy distance of a large town and, in fact, we can see Northampton, just a few miles away, from the end of our lane. Ludlow is in a very different position, sitting on a hill surrounded by rolling countryside and a larger town no nearer than 45 minutes away by car to the north, south or east. To the west is the even more remote and sparse mid-Wales and the nearest city, Birmingham, is 90 minutes away by car and nearly two hours by train. Staying there really did feel like we were a long way from anything truly urban and we were in a deeply rural place; and I loved it.

On one day we walked out of Ludlow on a loop across fields and back around and along the river. On the second full day we drove out into the villages and had another riverside walk. There were two very memorable wildlife moments on those two days; the first was finding a dipper feeding in the quick waters of a small stream and the second was coming across a sand martin colony on another river. The former was the first dipper I’ve seen in many a year and, perhaps, the first I’ve seen in England. The sand martins were in a natural colony of holes on the sandy vertical river bank. Whilst the dipper was a fleeting sighting, I could have stopped and sat for hours watching the sand martins; it was a very quiet, peaceful and isolated little spot where nature was just doing its thing. Here’s a couple of videos…

Despite being stuck at home for much of May, these are two wildlife memories which will stick in my head for quite a while.

Hopefully my recovery will continue as we’ve got our biggest trip of the year coming up in a couple of weeks and we’re hoping to spent a lot of time out in nature.