LUDLOW may look better enhanced, but one section of the community is less than entranced.

That, it appears, is the mood of disabled people, the elderly and anyone with mobility problems who uses wheel aids or has bad eyesight as Ludlow considers new town enhancement plans.

It is also the message from one well-known taxi driver who claims she has rescued about 20 mainly elderly people after wobbles on the cobbles near the Buttercross.

Taxi firm owner Annette Coombes is especially concerned about the welfare of her elderly mother who tripped a couple of years back on the spruced-up surface outside Bodenhams and broke her shoulder.

Exhibition

This time a week ago Shropshire County Council representatives were in town with an exhibition at the Buttercross to gauge public reaction to a new stage in Ludlow enhancement at the Bullring.

But one group that would have had difficulty crossing the "enhanced" cobbling to put across their views would have been the disabled and elderly.

Rather than risk the hard-to-see pavement ledge and the uneven surface, many might have chosen to let the opportunity pass.

Council traffic management engineer Glyn Shaw defended the use of the 9ins by 10ins York stone sets which he said had a flattened surface.

But while the exhibition was in progress we accompanied Hazel Millichip, 71, as she tried to negotiate enhanced Castle Square with the shopping trolley she uses as a walking aid.

She stopped to watch a woman in a wheelchair as, with a companion's help, the woman painfully abandoned the chair stuck at the entrance to Quality Square.

"They took up the old cobbles and put them back with big gaps in them. I think they forgot about us with wheels. My trolley keeps tipping up," Mrs Millichip said.