Bromyard to Church Stretton

NB: Mike visited churches en route, wouldn't it have been good for him if he could have stayed in one? Come on North Herefordshire Churches!

Statistics

Walker: Mike Salter

When: 24th to 25th April 2021

Pack weight: 6kgs

Distance walked: 36 miles

No of days: 2

No of churches visited: 15

No of Maps: The Landranger 1:50,000 maps numbers 149 and 137

No of Blisters: None

Weight lost/gained: None

Money spent: £10 (train fare Ludlow to Hereford)

Would I do it again: Yes

A 36 mile walk done in two days to re-visit a pair of tiny Norman churches on the side of the Clee Hills which have remained favourites amongst the roughly 6,000 medieval churches that I’ve visited in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Another objective was to pass through the yard of a farm once owned and worked by my mother’s brother.

Pack weight: Just over six kilos, including two days’ food. Other items, including my camera and a pair of 750ml water bottles, were carried in pouches from a waist-belt. The Landranger 1:50,000 maps numbers 149 and 137, plus chocolate, sweets, torch, stationery items etc, were carried in a customised map case worn round one shoulder.

I commonly start multi-day walks mid-week, but only on a Saturday could I use my pensioner’s bus pass early enough from Malvern to reach Worcester in time to catch the 10.30am bus to Bromyard, arriving at 11.15. This part of the trip was a repeat of what I’d done a fortnight previously to photograph the Norman doorways of Bromyard Church, and then meet up with a friend for a 12 mile walk home to West Malvern via a few geocaches. Heading north this time from Bromyard, two miles of field paths brought me to the church at Edwyn Ralph, with its interesting medieval effigies. More paths led to Thornbury, where the church has a blocked-up arcade from a long-demolished aisle. From there I followed lanes to Kyre Green and then bridleways to Tenbury Wells, where I refilled my water containers from a tap by a corner of the Late Norman church tower.

I crossed the widened medieval bridge over the Teme and began the climb onto the Clee Hills, stopping briefly at the churches of Greete and Whitton on my way up to the first of my main objectives, at 16 miles from Bromyard, the church at Hope Bagot. It’s about as small as a church composed of a west tower, nave and chancel can be and has several Norman features. Unfortunately it was locked, as it was now early evening. I’d rather hoped this remote church wouldn’t be locked until nearly dusk, if at all. Moving on after taking a few pictures, I found another tap at the church at Knowbury. There I joined the Jack Mytton long distance path up to A4117 and then along to Nine Springs Farm, which it turns out is still farmed by descendants of the couple who purchased it from my Uncle Roy in the early 1960s. For several years my mother had a caravan in a corner of a field south of the farmhouse, where we’d stay during school holidays and do circular walks around the Titterstone Clee. My uncle would tell us tales of how quarry wagons on the rope-hauled inclines sometimes got out of control and smashed against the over-bridges, the sort of stories that fascinate young boys probably everywhere.

On the common land beyond the farm I pitched my tarp near to where my brother and I would dam a stream to make a pool to sail paper boats on. It was a cold night but I was snug enough with my sleeping bag inside a survival bag. The problem was in the morning. Packing up after breakfast takes at least 40 minutes, and the tarp was soaking wet from frozen dew, it being early on a foggy morning. Anyway I soon warmed up once I actually started climbing to the top of the Titterstone Clee, starting by going past where my mother and I had scattered Uncle Roy’s ashes after he died in 1985.

As I followed the Jack Mytton Way for another mile and a half northwards, before turning off on the bridleway towards Cleedownton, I thought more about Uncle Roy. Money from his modest estate had been sufficient to enable me to move from a house prone to theft right by a busy main road near Wolverhampton’s ring-road to the peace and quiet of a house beside the Malvern Hills common-land. I contemplated my good fortune at owning the house outright without a mortgage. Since I’ve never had a car and not acquired any expensive tastes or had children, this enabled me to live on what most people would regard as a ludicrously small income. I’d had the freedom to write and publish the sort of books I myself would want to own without worrying too much about whether they would sell in appreciable quantities (some titles have, others haven’t), provided I walked or cycled to the places I wanted to see, and accommodation was mostly wild camping.

It started to brighten up as I approached Stoke St Milborough, where the wide-naved church is dedicated the founder of the original Saxon monastery at Wenlock, 15 miles further north. Next stop was the church at Clee St Margaret, a small late 11th century church with sections of herringbone masonry. There I re-joined the Jack Mytton Way for just over a mile on a bridleway across fields to the road junction at Heath. Here, in a field, not a graveyard, lies a lonely chapel-of-ease which is one of the half-dozen least-altered 12th century places of worship in England, surely a much better place for spiritual thoughts and meditation than any cathedral or other large church in a busy town or city.

I continued along the Jack Mytton Way for a mile to Tugford, where a doorway and window probably go back to the time of the church mentioned there in 1138. I then left the Jack Mytton Way to go along the south side of a stream to get a better view (from the south) of the last remaining original tower of the much-altered and still-inhabited late 14th century castle at Broncroft. Another mile and a half brought me to yet another Norman church, that of Munslow, from which I used a bridleway though Millichope Park. From it there was a view across a ploughed field of the sunny side of a late 13th century forester’s lodge at Upper Millichope, a very rare survival. From Eaton-under-Haywood, with its Late Norman south-transeptal tower, I followed winding lanes and then a path to the outskirts of Church Stretton, where there is a sheila-na-gig above the north doorway of the Norman nave of the cruciform church, and my walk was complete. Tea-time buses then got me as far south as Ludlow. Trains home via Hereford were my only expenditure of the trip.