Crisis, What Crisis?

It is odd to travel less than 90 minutes from home and visit a major town about which I know almost nothing - just an odd lacuna among the random tracks around the planet that my life has followed

Malvern developed as a spa town from the 17th century, but especially after the coming of the Victorian railway. This brought coal - meaning comfortable accommodation for visitors in all seasons - and affordable travel for all classes. There are accounts of local protests in 1865 about both the impact of visitor numbers on the facilities in the town and rampant profiteering by the railway company exploiting the demand. Barcelona and Venice would understand

The town seems to have a history of making its opinions clear. The hills that loom over the town - so close and so steep that they are almost alarming, like a tsunami of rock - are public land, parrly due to successful local resistance to enclosures and pushback against encroachment on the commons by large landowners. Chalk one up to the power of protest

The health spa boom provoked an explosion of hotels and guest houses, and architects seem to have seen the 'getaway' atmosphere of the place as a provocation to some fanciful designs. We keep doing double-takes of buildings that look as if they should be in Athens or Bologna or Morocco. The spa boom receded, many of the buildings became schools or colleges, but the town retains an echo of people here for a good time - especially on a sunny Sunday afternoon in early spring

The building was an ancient priory, established after the Norman conquest, dissolved and plundered by Henry VIII but partly retained as a parish church. The tree is a Monterey Pine - Pinus radiata - as out of place as all those frivolous buildings, but a magnificent tree for all that

We are here to observe the spirit of the place and have a good time. A rural film festival; 5 films in 3 days (for us). We enjoyed the decadence of emerging from a cinema in daylight and discussing the plot over café lunch