Hillwalking in Shropshire. John Gillham

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      INTRODUCTION

      Into my heart an air that kills

      From yon far country blows:

      What are these blue remembered hills

      What spires, what farms are those?

      … In valleys of springs of rivers

      By Ony and Teme and Clun,

      The country for easy livers,

      The quietest under the sun

      Two verses from ‘A Shropshire Lad’ by AE Housman, in which he yearns for his home county

      Shropshire lies at the heart of England but well away from the cities, the smoke and the noise. It is an extremely rural county with only two sizeable towns – Shrewsbury and Telford. Stand on any of its mountains and you’ll see a patchwork of greenery; pastures divided by hedgerow and woodland copses. It’s undulating country, never truly mountainous but with sufficient distinctive peaks and rocks to keep a walker happy for years.

      The county is divided into two by the River Severn, which meanders from the Welsh hills into Shrewsbury, where it forms a wide loop before threading through a wooded gorge at Ironbridge and, beyond Bridgnorth, out into Worcestershire. To the north and east of the great river the landscape is one of flat, fertile pastures; to the south and west it’s one of fine but little-known hills. The latter area has been designated the ‘Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Beauty’. Most but not all of the walks in this guide are here.

      From the magnificent town of Ludlow, the River Teme cuts a fine valley, winding through the south Shropshire countryside to Knighton and the Welsh borders. Here Offa’s Dyke takes us over green ridges to the Kerry Hills and the small town of Clun. Around here, many of the hills are topped with Iron Age forts which will enliven the day and spark the imagination.

      From Ludlow you can look east to Titterstone Clee Hill – a rakish, rugged escarpment crowned by towers and white radomes and a fine viewpoint with some craggy slopes. It’s scarred with mines and quarries, so if you love industrial archaeology then you’ll love this place, as well as Brown Clee Hill a few miles to the north. Brown Clee is the highest hill in the county and its industrial scars have been softened by forests in the east.

      The most spectacular scenery, however, lies to the north and east between the wooded limestone escarpment of Wenlock Edge and the plains of Shrewsbury and the Severn Valley. Here are three distinct ranges: the Stretton Hills, the Long Mynd and Stiperstones. The Stretton Hills are steep-sided whalebacks of volcanic origin, with tremendous ‘free-striding’ ridges. Caer Caradoc is the highest of these and has a huge fort on top, but the Lawley offers the purest of the ridge-walks.

      On the other side of Church Stretton is the Long Mynd, a broad 7-mile (11km) heather ridge cut deep in the east by several crag-fringed, steep-sided batches (small valleys), which provide superb walks to the tops. Across the wide valley of the East Onny lies Stiperstones, another long heather ridge but this time studded with shattered rocky tors. Manstone Rocks on Stiperstones is the second highest peak in Shropshire.

      The hills get smaller as you go northwards towards Shrewsbury, but the volcanic hog’s back that is the Wrekin makes one last stand. Although covered with forest, there’s just enough open ground and lots of rocky outcrops to make this a top priority on a hillwalker’s to-do list.