Martin and I took advantage of a January weekend to spend two days in Shropshire, near the Long Mynd. We had very un-British sunny crisp weather, albeit very cold. On Saturday morning we met in North London and drove the 140 miles to Wenlock Edge, a low escarpment south of Shrewsbury.
Wenlock Edge is an escarpment running north-south from The Wrekin and cuts across some lovely countryside. We headed across-country on our walking route, following a map and using my GPS.
We stayed at the small youth hostel in the village of Ratlinghope, which in the winter is only open on weekends. It was suitably cold, and most of the guests, who were all hardy walkers, huddled near to the fire. Martin and I luckily had a dorm room to ourselves so no snorers to worry about!
The next day we drove to the town of Church Stretton, and started out on a lovely hike to the top of Caer Caradoc, which was formed of volcanic rock, but was not actually a volcano. (Caer comes from Welsh and means fortication.) There was a light dusting of frost on the top and the wind was very cold, but the 360 degree view was worth it, all the way east to Birmingham and west over the Long Mynd.
We descended off Caer Caradoc, and climbed up on to Hope Bowder Hill, and then down to the south-east of Church Stretton. It was a lovely walk and by this time Martin had decided that he would be quite happy to live in Shropshire.
Here are two links to the walking pages on walkingbritain.co.uk, which provide good walking directions for these, and other walks in Shropshire and the UK.
Wenlock Edge page at walkingbritain.co.uk and Caer Caradoc and Hope Bowder Hill page at walkingbritain.co.uk.
Here is my GPS track of both walks, in Mapsource GDB and GPX formats.
Shropshire January 2005.gdb Mapsource file
Shropshire January 2005.gpx GPS file