In pictures: Herefordshire’s black and white villages
Herefordshire, the English county I grew up in, is a rural landscape of cider orchards, hop yards and rolling hills. But there’s a touch of monochrome among the greenery – the black and white half-timbered buildings. There are hundreds of these buildings in the north-east of the county. Some date back to the 16th and 17th centuries, but the idea of painting the oak beams black and the walls white is a Victorian one. The most picturesque villages are linked by a 40-mile circular route – the ‘Black and White Village Trail’, stretching from Leominster to the Welsh borders. Around here you can live in a black and white cottage, drink in a black and white pub, and even keep your doves in a black and white dovecote if you like.
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Lovely photos and I’d love to follow that trail sometime!
Herefordshire’s a bit of an unknown bit of the UK but has some beautiful countryside – and if you like cider it’s definitely the place to come!
I discovered cider when I was at Bristol Uni and I haven’t stopped drinking it since!
And drink black and white Guinness, I presume? Don’t know why Lucy but they remind me of the nursery rhyme “there was a crooked man”. Don’t know what that says about me!
Guinness would go perfectly, not sure about a suitable black and white food to go with it though? Am sure there’s not an even wall or floor in any of them and can imagine lots of nooks and hidden passageways!
You really capture the charm of this place!
Thanks Karen, glad to show off a bit of an overlooked but lovely part of the UK.
Love these photographs, we have friends in Bromyard and I just love walking around the town. They still have one of those shops where you can buy anything, even a fishing rod for the rare left handed garden Gnome. I guess like everywhere else it’s no all rose covered cottages but it is a part of the UK that gets overlooked somehow. Rye on the Sussex Kent Border is another small town where you fel as if you have travelled back three generations to a much better time. Great post thank you
Thanks, I’ve never been to Rye (as ever your home country tends to get a bit overlooked for more exotic pastures!) but I may have to give it a visit sometime. I do love these really old fashioned English villages that feel like they haven’t changed for centuries.
Beautiful architecture! So much fun to see from here in Virginia. Thanks for sharing. A nice reminder to this travel journalist/blogger to share photos/info about what’s familiar to me, too.
It’s so true that it’s easy to forget that what’s familiar and ordinary to you might be interesting to other people, I love reading about people’s lives across the world.