Saturday 29th July – Sunday 30th July

Veronica and I accompanied the Shrewsbury Street Pastors on their rounds of the town on Saturday night through to about 3.30 am on Sunday morning. The Street Pastors are volunteers belonging to local churches and were set up as a charitable organisation in response to a request from the Police to launch a scheme that would make the town centre a safer place for people to enjoy themselves over the weekend. They patrol the streets from about 10.30 pm until the last clubs in Shrewsbury are shut. We were extremely impressed with the very tactful way in which the Street Pastors dealt with the series of problems that that arose during the night – trying to catch the problems when they are still small and before things escalate out of control. One of the photographs shows the Street Pastors giving out flip-flops to soneone leaving a club and the other shows the Street Pastors’ lorry with first aid equipment, defibrilators, water etc. This is an excellent cause and more information can be found on http://www.shrewsbury.streetpastors.org.uk/about/.