Lyth Hill to Wilderley and return

We had reached Wilderley Hall Farm (SJ435017) on our walk from Ratlinghope yesterday, so today’s intention was to link from one of the free car parks on Lyth Hill to Wilderley Hall Farm, before returning by another route. It wasn’t such a stunning walk as those described in the following legs (which we had actually walked previously!) and there was perhaps too much road walking, especially on the return walk, but it was pleasant enough, and sections of the return leg were as good as any on the outward official Shropshire Way route. The weather was fine all day.

We’d been warned that the electricity supply to the cottage was going to be off for most of the day, and as we were preparing to leave the cottage, various National Grid vehicles appeared outside, and a man was checking that residents understood the arrangements, necessitated by the replacement of a transformer. The access road to Adstone is narrow and steep, so we were pleased not have met one of the National Grid vehicles coming the other way as we left, and we had a good journey (by a slightly circuitous route to avoid more narrow roads) to the Lyth Hill car park at SJ477073. The view from here was stunning, stretching round from the Wrekin to the east round by way of  Caer Caradoc (with Wenlock Edge behind in the same general direction) to the Long Mynd and our walking route  of the past few days, to the south-west. Unfortunately the direction of the Sun made photography rather difficult. 

We dutifully followed the route of the Shropshire Way as indicated by the signposting, which took us along a stony  track at the top of the Lyth Hill, but we'd have done better to walk along the grassy area to our left, as most of the dog walkers who had parked in the car park were doing, We passed the second car park (whose vehicular access is from the west, whereas we had approached up Bayston Hill to the north-east) and various des. res. properties, which share that stunning view. Eventually we descended slowly, across Spring Coppice, to join the path that has followed along the bottom of the scarp slope of Lyth Hill, which was apparently created by a geological fault.

I noticed a couple of deer grazing in a field straight ahead of us and as we continued around "The Yews" we saw a larger herd, with an impressively horned stag. We continued by way of a track to Little Vinnals and then The Vinnals, with a discrepancy at one point between the OS App and the (newly purchased) paper map, presumably caused by a re-routing to take us further away from someone's house. The paper map was wrong, as it (and the App) had been near Sheppen Fields yesterday. Richard was heard to mutter about paper Ordnance Survey maps being a waste of money; they aren't really, we wouldn't risk setting out without them, but to be useful they really need to be kept up to date. I note that the printed  OS Explorer Sheet 241 that we were using, despite having been bought within the past month (and being the edition that the OS themselves are currently selling) bears a 2015 copyright and the revision date is 2012. I'm afraid I am not impressed.

After The Vinnals, the track was rather muddy in places (perhaps because we were crossing what is shown as a ford on the map!) but it was also attractive, with hedges on either side. Eventually we emerged onto open fields with some nice views to the hills in the distance.  Past an area called "The Gorse" on the map (actually just a woodland) we crossed a minor road and shortly after this we stopped for an early lunch; there hadn't been exactly many possible places to sit, and from about a kilometre further on we'd be into a section of road walking, so a large branch from a tree, now on the ground close to a little stream, was too good an opportunity to pass by. 

After lunch we continued to reach the road near Cottage Farm, and we followed this for a couple of miles back to Wilderley Hall Farm. When we were nearly there, a man coming the other way asked us directions, but I'm afraid we weren't really quite sure where he wanted to be. We passed the junction where we'd left the Shropshire Way yesterday, and shortly afterwards we reached Wilderley Hall Farm,  which we'd also passed yesterday and where we were leaving the Shropshire Way today. 

We had noticed the church in Church Pulverbatch (or at least, the top of the tower) in the distance both yesterday and today; now we just had to get to it. This necessitated a descent down a track to a ford then a climb up the other side, so it was perhaps the toughest section of today's walk. However, it was also very enjoyable.  We walked into Church Pulverbatch, hoping to find somewhere to somewhere to sit down, and the churchyard seemed a good place to look.  It took us a little while to find the entrance to the churchyard which sounds ridiculous, given how obvious the church had been, but neither of the two entrances is directly off a road. However we were rewarded by a bench, which provided an opportunity for me to change my socks and for Richard to change his hearing aid batteries. We dropped two of the tiny batteries on the ground. I saw one straight away,  but the other had hidden itself on the mossy ground and we only found it by chance as we were leaving. 

Like finding it, leaving the churchyard was also not as straightforward as you'd imagine. We could see a path that appeared to head directly towards the road we wanted to be on, but as we started to head down it, a hedge-cutting tractor was heading straight towards us. So we went back the way we had come, and as we reached the cross roads in the centre of the village, the tractor was coming towards us again, still cutting hedges. On our way out of the village, we passed a building with an interesting topiary hedge (I don't think they use a tractor to cut that!) and an upmarket wine merchant making a delivery. 

There followed a three mile section of road walking, to Stapleton. The roads were considerably less busy than I had worried that they might be, but it was quite a long stretch - and not terribly exciting - so we were ready for another sit down when we got there. Again we headed to the church, and round the back there were two convenient benches. Our preferred route from here back to Lyth Hill included the use of three separate footpaths to cut across between roads and then to the path that runs along the bottom of Lyth Hill. Fortunately they were all reasonably signposted and well-walked, though the middle path (between Chatford House and Westley) necessitated us finding our way between an impressive array of agricultural machinary, and the path on the final approach to Lyth Hill was constrained to a narrow strip to the right of an electric fence, which separated us from the sheep in the field. 

We turned right onto the track along the bottom of Lyth Hill. It was initially more footpath than track, but eventually we emerged onto a proper track, which brought us to a minor road. If we'd turned right, the road would have taken us by way of Little Lyth to the main A49, but we turned left to the car park. I really wouldn't want to drive a car this way, though others were - perhaps it is not as bad as I'd thought it would be.  We drove back to the cottage by way of our more cautious route down Bayston Hill and then through the outskirts of Shrewsbury then through Hook-a-Gate, Longden and Pulverbatch (only about half a mile from where we had walked in Church Pulverbatch). 

Following leg of Shropshire Way (anti-clockwise direction)