Our Oswestry beauty spots challenge

Traders in Oswestry hit out this week at the lack of local photographs in the tourist brochure Escape to Oswestry, with the organisers claiming they struggled to find any. We sent Shropshire Star reporter

out to Oswestry and the surrounding countryside to see whether she could find any local beauty spots in just an hour.

Yesterday, on one of the greyest days of the year, my brief was simple. Get a camera and take some photographs of beauty spots in Oswestry and the immediate countryside.

I am passionate about the beauty of this area but my heart sank as I as realised that the mist and murk was not going to make my task easy.

Jayne Middleton from Oswestry Rotary Club suggested the grounds of St Oswald's Parish Church - featured in small photographs inside the brochure.

"I always think of the heritage centre. It was first in Oswestry in 1407 by the church," she said.

"I think it is a wonderful building. It is the oldest in Oswestry and the school started there.

"It is a really important building for Oswestry."

It proved to be ideal for photographs and I also snapped some of the older town centre buildings, such as the former Black Gate pub, now the Bullring.

I then headed up to the Racecourse - one of my favourite parts of the world.

It is a joy to visit whatever the season and a photographer's dream.

That is unless it is hidden in thick fog as it was yesterday. It was all I could do to find the two headed horse sculpture, never mind take a photograph to do it justice.

Offa's Dyke path winds across the racecourse and over the stunning Oswestry foothills but yesterday the path signposts just pointed into the fog and my next destination, the hillfort, was again ruined by the weather.

The Escape Brochure features the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the front page to mark the granting of World Heritage Status to the Llangollen Canal from Llangollen to Shropshire.

Dilys Gaskill, who lives in Llanymynech, is a member of the Borderland Tourism organisation and said the 2011 brochure was the best yet.

"We chose the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct because it had just been granted World Heritage Status and that is such a draw for tourists."

But I chose to take my photograph of the canal on the Oswestry side of the World Heritage Site, at Chirk Bank, within the former Oswestry Borough Council area.

My last photographs were in my village of Whittington, with its castle another picture postcard scene that has been used in the past on the front of the brochure.

If I had had more time I would have then headed for the incredible Llanymynech Rocks and some of the Shropshire Wildlife Nature Reserves around Oswestry.

But my hour was up, an hour in which I literally could only give a tiny snapshot, in appalling weather, of why people escape to Oswestry.