STAGE 1 - Day 2 - Snailbeach to Bridges
Today is the first day of walking and begins the first leg of the journey, in a long loop around South Shropshire.
Before I tell my story, here's my dad’s journal entry from 1962 to compare:
And now for mine!
My cousin Sheila cooked me a cracking fried breakfast to set me up for the walk then kindly drove me from her house in Church Stretton to my starting point. On the way we dropped in on Sheila’s daughter Julie who lives in Minsterley and had a cup of tea and a good blether.
Then back in the car for a couple of minutes to Snailbeach, a tiny place with several large abandoned lead mines and a car park conveniently located for walking to the Stiperstones. Just as I got out of the car it started raining ferociously so I got straight back in again and waited it out for 10 minutes. Then suddenly the sun returned and Sheila bid me farewell as she had to get to work though she'll join me for some of the walk next week. Aunt Maggie and Polly the Poodle are sadly no longer with us but I will be visiting cousin Amanda next week.
And so it began!
From the car park I ascended the footpath up the hill, past more remnants of mine works then in through a lusciously green wood splashed with the with the purple tint of bluebells.
When I reached the top of the wood I crossed into a field of sheep who glared at me as I intruded through their domain. A little way higher up I turned around and was treated to my first breathtaking view of Shropshire, made all the more atmospheric by the slight glaze of mist that hung over the valley and the brick chimney of the old mine in the foreground.
The weather was constantly changing its mind, and in the space of half an hour I’d changed back and forth between raincoat and hood to sunglasses and t-shirt three times. I detoured around one of the adjoining hills to see the site of an iron age castle ring-fort. Although there weren't a lot of remains to be seen the situation alone fired the imagination. I thought of the people who’d built themselves a home on that windy open hilltop. I don’t imagine they ever tired of the view at least. The fort occupied the flat space in the foreground and behind it I captured an enormous raincloud emptying itself over the grateful vegetation and presumably less grateful inhabitants of the far side of the valley.
Back on the path and around the next bend where I caught the first glimpse of the Stiperstones, rising up into the dark, clouded sky like something from Mordor. One look at them on the horizon and you can see why they are stepped in legend and superstition.
The first one I reached was the Devil’s Chair, which I wanted to climb but I’d read that it’s bad luck to do so unless you have a completely pure heart, and though undoubtedtly faultless as I am I thought I’d better not chance it at the start of a 500 mile walk. Up close the three famous tors are just “a load of old rocks” as my beloved cockney girlfriend would say but the overall impression they make with the landscape around them is striking.
Some pictures follow: firstly the Devil’s Chair, then a view from a small gap in it, the walk to Manstone Rock, me being lashed by the wind atop the triangulation point on its summit and the view from the top, minus the now thankfully demolished towers of Buildwas.
Descending the other end of the ridge I arrived at the car park where my dad began his adventure (I stated at the other end to make it a linear route) and from there followed a nature trail from which I saw lots of red grouse, the Southermost population of them in the world. I then took a series of pretty little country lanes, farm tracks and fields across the valley and up the other side to the Betchcott Hills, at the North end of the Long Mynd.
The last stretch took me down a serene and green little valley towards Rattlinghope. The remains of another ancient settlement close to a mighty oak made me imagine the characters that must have sat underneath it over the centuries. Ratchup itself was a lovely little hamlet with farm buildings and a few cottages. I watched a boy carry a pale of water across the yard and his mother call at him from the kitchen where she appeared to be cooking, and thought how I could have been watching the same scene centuries before.
A short path through a wood by a small river took me to the road just outside Bridges and there I found the YHA hostel, whose warden Amanda was thankfully far friendlier than her predecessor. She possessed an encycloapedic knowledge of the YHA’s hostel network, including those my dad stayed in, over half of which have sadly closed down since then. Tonight is one of only 6 of the 15 that he stayed in that are still open, and one of only 3 that I was able to book to stay in myself, as the others were either only accepting groups due to covid or fully booked on those dates. Tonight the only guests were myself and 8 Dutchmen in a motorbike crew! I wanted to photograph the interior of the common room which was of the very traditional hostel type and reminded me of a geography classroom, but the bikers were all sat there and I didn't feel like disturbing them.
Although still in business, the Horseshoe Inn next door where my dad met fellow hostellers and a boring old miner was annoyingly closed on Tuesdays, the day I was staying so Sheila and Rob came and drove me to The Stiperstones Inn for dinner, which was described 90 years ago in The Shropshire Of Mary Webb as a place where the “good folk are kindly people and provide a pleasant, peaceful rest with old-world hospitality.” The staff were indeed kindly enough, the food perfectly tolerable and the local ale positively delicious. Twas a very enjoyable evening altogether. First pic is The Horeshoe Inn, the second my rescuers from an evening of potential hunger, and the last few at The Stiperstones Inn.
I returned to Bridges exhausted, and as the bikers had taken over the living room and were spreading only Dutch in there, I chatted to Amanda for a while for retiring to my bunk bed.