Twenty years ago, I spent a blissful week in a 13th-century mansion in south-west France with my friends around me to distract me from turning 40. Two decades later, with an even scarier birthday approaching, could I re-create the same thing?
The short answer was … not quite.
Those days of ridiculously cheap flights and car hire are long gone, and I realised I couldn’t ask my friends to fork out hundreds of pounds for a holiday they didn’t choose. Work schedules were tighter than ever, as was money.
But then the lukewarm reception to my original French idea changed dramatically when I told my friends I’d managed to find a beautiful Georgian townhouse in Ludlow, one of Shropshire’s – and Britain’s – loveliest market towns. Would they like to come? Cue a minor stampede towards the Shropshire Hills when I sent everyone the link to the Ludlow Townhouse, an exquisitely decorated six-bedroom 18th-century house on the town’s most celebrated street, Broad Street.
Over six days, my husband and I kept open house as friends (and a very cute dog) ebbed and flowed throughout the week, some coming for four nights, others for two, another able to stay the night on her way back from a wedding in Worcester. Friends from nearby Hereford hopped on the train and texted me from the Ludlow Brewing Company, which was holding its Octoberfest that weekend. “Fancy a pint?” “On our way!”
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Eventually, the entire party ended up there knocking back pints of Ludlow Gold before I remembered we had promised to feed these people, and we marshalled the lot home in time to cook an enormous pot of pasta alla Norma. Many bottles of wine later, and, for some, a few games on the antique pool table in the second of the two enormous lounges, I joyfully watched my friends, most of whom didn’t know each other, meld together and form a cohesive, jolly, convivial group.
When three friends had to leave because of work commitments, another five took their place. Each arrival got the grand tour of this delightfully idiosyncratic townhouse, with its wonky…
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