Hi Will,

>>if I hadn't chosen Scotland, next choice would probably have been the Welsh border, south of Shrewsbury, north of Ross-On-Wye

>that area of the Welsh Borders is more or less where I live & ride

I got to like it in possibly a strange way ... As a kid, I liked the Lone Pine series of books - basically not dissimilar to Blyton's Famous Five but I preferred the Lone Pine books. Most Lone Pine books are set in one of two areas - around Rye in East Sussex and the Long Mynd in Shropshire; I was familiar with the Rye area as a granny lived nearby, we'd visit her at least every summer, eventually my family moved to Rye itself in 1978. Once I could afford a large cc motorcycle thanks to my Merchant Navy career, which also gave me several months at a time paid a salary but not required to do any work ... Several years later, a girlfiend had parents who lived in Salop Newport, so not much diversion required to ride/drive through the Shrewsbury - Ross area between London and her parents or vice versa ...