EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

Heading east from Hereford, it's an easy fifteen miles along the A438 to LEDBURY , a good-looking little town perched on the western edge of the Malvern Hills. The focus of the town is the Market Place, home to the dinky Market House , a Tudor beamed building raised on oak columns and with herringbone pattern beams. From beside it, narrow Church Lane - not to be confused with adjacent Church Street - runs up the slope framed by an especially fine ensemble of half-timbered Tudor and Stuart buildings. Among them is the Butchers' Row House Museum and, pick of the bunch, the so-called Painted Room (Easter-Sept Mon-Fri 11am-3pm, Sun 2-5pm; free), featuring a set of bold symmetrical floral frescoes painted on wattle-and-daub walls sometime in the sixteenth century. At the far end of the lane stands St Michael's parish church , whose strong and slender spire pokes high into the sky. The nucleus of the church is Norman - note the round pillars and zigzag stonework - but the most interesting features are the funerary monuments inside, including the spectacular seventeenth-century Skynner Tomb , where five sons and five daughters kneel in honour of their parents, beneath the canopied slab on which their parents also kneel.

Ledbury train station is inconveniently situated on the northern edge of town, about three-quarters of a mile from the Market Place - straight down the A438. Buses stop on the Market Place, across from the tourist office (daily 10am-5pm; tel 01531/636147, ). Accommodation is thin on the ground, but the Feathers Hotel (tel 01531/635266; £90-110) occupies a smashing "Black and White" on the High Sreet, footsteps from the Market Place - and has just sixteen very comfortable rooms. As for food , the Malthouse Restaurant , on Church Lane (tel 01531/634443; closed Sun), is exemplary, with a creative menu featuring local ingredients - main courses average around £15. Also on Church Lane, the charming Prince of Wales   pub is a great place to sink a beer amidst its snug, low-beamed rooms.