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

I joined Charles Garnsworthy and Reiko Koyama for a winter stroll through the Chiltern Hills north-west of London. We started at Saunderton train station, and headed north along the Ridgeway path. This path follows an escarpment of hills which was used in pre-historic times as an early migration and tranport route. At that time most of England was covered in dense forest and this higher ground would have provided the easiest and clearest route from east to west.

The three of us stopped in at Bledlow and visited its Holy Trinity Church where we given mince pies and a detailed tour of its interior.

At the Lions pub we had a hot meal and continued on our way, enjoying more mince pies courtesy of Charles.
Even though the paths were muddy, the sky was mostly clear, with some wonderful vistas of blue sky with the lows rays of the sun lighting up the trees.

Mapsource GPS file
GPX file

Photos from December.

We stayed at the “Owl” lodge, “Fukuro-no-yado”、and spent two days snowshoeing up high on the top of Yatsugatake.

Route:
From the top of Piratasu ropeway we hiked north over Yoko-dake and down through a forested slope without any tracks to a small frozen lake. We kept heading north with Tateshina-dake in front of us, until we found a trail going west. This took us slowly down along a narrow river valley to the road, where Bill met us.

Mapquest map

GPS tracks and waypoints:
Mapsource GDB file
GPX file

Photos of our trip.

GPS tracks:
Mapsource GDB file
GPX file