Bury Ditches to Hopesay and return via Clunbury

After yesterday's walk down the road that links the Bury Ditches car park at SO302811 with the village of Clunton, I was a bit worried about driving up it. However, Richard made the driving look easy; it was nothing like as bad as we'd experienced on our driving adventure after our walk a few days ago, and we didn't meet any other cars on any of the steep, narrow or twisty sections. I was also a bit worried about the walk; I wasn't looking forward to what we were expecting to be an outward and return walk on the same path, with a fair number of climbs and descents that we would have to tackle in both directions, ending with a climb back up to the Bury Ditches car park at the end of the day. I won't spoil my own thunder by giving details yet, but it is fair to say that I enjoyed the whole walk much more than I was expecting to. 

After a short walk back down a steepish section of road, and a pause to photograph the attractive rolling countryside we'd be walking towards, we took a track which descended quite steeply to Stanley Cottage. Oh dear, steep descent means steep ascent in the other direction! However, from that point and all the way to Kempton we gradient was very gentle; we were essentially walking through a valley, sheltered by Walcot Park to the north and Clunton Hill to the south There was a friendly dog sitting outside Stanley Cottage and we continued into woodland. This is Walcot Wood, once part of Clive of India's Walcot Estate. The route dived off onto a narrow path through the wood; it was beautifully peaceful, but apart from "veteran oaks" we didn't see any of the unusual species (e.g. lichen or beetles) for which the wood is known.

Tha path through the wood re-emerged onto a track close to Lodge Farm and Lodge House, and from here until the approach to Kempton we were walking through more typical estate parkland. It's an attractive landscape. For some reason the route doesn't go straight on to Kempton perhaps the "FB" by the "ford" on the straight through route doesn't exist?) but rather takes a circuit around to the north. This required some careful route-finding and occasional rather nettly, overgrown sections of path. We crossed the River Kemp by way of an old bridge and returned to the village.

We crossed the B4385 and took a track up the other side; we climbed steadily, with lovely views opening up behind us all the way back to Sunnyhill with Bury Ditches on top. Close to the summit, we took a path to the right; there followed a delightful, generally descending section of walking. We walked around fields with good displays of wildflowers and enjoyed views of tree-topped hills, including one called "Burrow" which again has a hill fort on the top.  We eventually descended to Hopesay, where we stopped to visit the delightful church, which has the same sort of unusual tower as at Clun. Inside, there was an attractive modern stained-glass window, designed as a memorial to a  one Thomas Beddoes and his son, also Thomas, who lived nearby. Oustside, there was a well-placed bench and we sat here to plan the rest of today's walk. As yesterday, the most obvious thing to do would be to simply retrace our steps, but this didn't appeal, and we spotted a circuit that would take us down to the Clun valley  at Aston on Clun, then along to Clunbury, before returning to Kempton to retrace the first  part of this morning's walk. 

A significant challenge of tomorrow's walk would be to climb Hopesay Hill, but the views from Hopesay don't really do the hill justice. The walk down to Aston on Clun was pleasant enough and there are some attractive buildings in the village, though the B4369 was quite busy so we were pleased that we only had to walk a short distance along it. Ironically, at this point we were only just over a mile from our holiday cottage, considerably less than the distance back to where we had left the car. We headed off down a very narrow lane to Beambridge, grateful that this seems to be a lane that people walk along rather than driving along. We crossed the bridge over the river and turned right, noticing for the first time the attractive sign showing a viaduct that we later realised shows the route of the Heart of Wales Line Trail. The narrow lane climbed above the valley and then returned to it.

And so to Clunbury. It's a very pretty place, with picturesque cottages and church...but what we really wanted was somewhere to sit for lunch. There were a couple of benches near the church, but they were both in full sun, which was not what we wanted. However, Richard found a gate at the far end of the churchyard, and through this there was a perfect place at which to sit on the ground, in the shade of a tree. A sign alerted us that there was no onward public right of way down to the river, but we didn't want to do any further along here! After lunch we found our footpath which left the village in a corner then crossed a footbridge and meandered across fields and climbed slightly to Purslow. The final part of the route was not quite as shown on the map, but we found our way without difficulty and emerged onto the B4368 by the Hundred House Inn.

The "main road" to Kempton heads off from Little Brampton, half a mile or so further to the north-east, but our route was along another minor lane which left the B4368 almost opposite the point at which we'd emerged. So far as motorised transport was concerned, this was again lovely and quiet, but there were a few people about. There were people installing a new footpath sign (and possibly a new stile) where a path left the road to climb Clunbury Hill to our left and having seen this work taking place, we then noticed that the next two footpaths we passed also had smart new signs. Then we said hello to a woman cycling towards us. The lane we were on took a right hand bend to head across the river and so to the main road on the other side of the valley, but there was a straight ahead route heading into Kempton and although it wasn't coloured all the way up to the point where the footpath headed back up to Walcot Wood, we decided to take the risk rather than heading off to the "wrong" side of the valley. At first all went well. However, when we were nearly at the Shropshire Way,  there was a closed gate across the lane, with no entry signs. It was very frustrating.

At worst we'd have had to go back all the way to the bend in the road, but we hoped we might be able to  take another lane through the village and then to cross the footbridge by the ford from west to east, before taking the northern loop back around to get us heading to the west again, and this is what we did.  It was OK, and got us where we wanted to be, but it all felt rather unnecessary and we were left with the impression of Kempton as a rather unfriendly village. Fortunately, as we walked back through the Walcot Valley, the woman on a bike came cycling towards us and we stopped for a chat; she was VERY friendly and it turns out she lives in Kempton! We began to revise our opinion of the village's residents. She had just been out for some exercise prior to taking an online English class, which led to an interesting conversation about the pros and cons of online teaching and working from home. Further on, we noticed some black creatures up on the hillside to our right -  grazing goats - and when we passed Stanley Cottage for the second time, the friendly dog was still outside, but so were his friendly owners.