Shropshire: "It's more like it was now than it was then"

In an episode of The Green Green Grass, the Shropshire-based spin-off from Only Fools and Horses, an American who had been stationed in the county in the 1960s proposes looking round to see how things have changed.

"It's not changed," comes the reply. "If anything it's more like it was now than it was then."

It would be nice if it were true, but in the 30 years I have been visiting the county things have changed.

I used to be struck but how much cheaper houses were than in Leicetershire, but that all changed when the weekending classes discovered the gourmet restaurants of Ludlow and then the countryside around them.

These days, you have to head for the part of Shropshire that is almost in Wales to find the county as I remember it - or would like it to have been.

I took these photographs in Snailbeach on my last visit.