Market Drayton

There is a fundamental attraction in visiting a town I’ve not been to before, even, as on this occasion, when the station has long been closed and been replaced by a supermarket. The Wellington to Drayton Railway opened as part of the GWR in 1867 and closed to passengers in 1963 and freight in 1967. I had listened to trains on it in the 1950s, whilst enjoying a farm holiday with the family at Cold Hatton, but even though I marched my mum under a hot summer sun to Ellerdine Halt, I never saw anything pass by. I put it down as an early exercise in learning to deal with frustration.

The Shropshire Union Canal got there before the railway and there are some half-timbered Tudor style buildings, but Market Drayton seemed a little sleepy yesterday, kind of half-hearted and resigned to a lesser role than previously. The centre has its share of a tattoo shops, bookmakers, vaping outlets and empty units, in common with so many market towns around the country today. We found a warm welcome at Ford Hall Farm’s café, but others we sampled in the town seemed underused, uninspired, and when the lights went out and one half of the double-door was locked on the dot of 4’o clock, we knew that afternoon teatime was emphatically over, and that kind of summed it up, really.