Olympic Torch heads to Much Wenlock

Olympic Torch heads to Much Wenlock, a set on Flickr.

This July, the 126th Wenlock Olympian Games - in many peoples' eyes, the real version of the modern Olympics - will be held. The product of a Victorian Visionary, Dr William Penny Brookes, they started in the middle of the 19th Century in Much Wenlock. Brookes was a philanthropist whose goal was Victorian Social Reform.

He wanted to improve the lot of the working classes by encouraging them to take part in physical recreation, and he organised an annual event in the town with a range of competitions. The event grew larger, attracting people from wider and wider regions of the country.
In 1890, a Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin visited Brookes to see the Games, and a few years later he set up the International Olympic Committee.

The rest, as they say, is history.

It is entirely fitting that the 2012 Olympic Torch doffs its flag, so to speak, to the small Shropshire Town where it all started.

These pictures were taken in Cressage, a couple of miles north of the town.