Titterstone Clee Hill to Toot View

I am very fond of walks which start or end at the place we are staying, and today's was such a walk. We were able to leave my car safely at Toot View (our holiday cottage at SO595832), with the decision on which car to leave being partly made by the fact that my car's locks won't be changed later in the month, following the break in to our house in which a set of keys were stolen. We also knew that today's was quite a short walk (as well as being nice to head back to the cottage rather than some random car park, we hadn't been able to find any better spaced car parks between Ludlow and Wilderhope Manor than the ones we used) so we had quite a leisurely start. The most direct driving route to the Titterstone Clee car park (SO593776) looked very minor, so we drove along the B4364 almost to Ludlow then back along the A4117 to the turning for Dhustone and Titterstone Clee. 

The views from the car park were much clearer than they had been yesterday, though it was also quite breezy up there. We set off walking and continued to climb, up towards the "radomes", golf-ball shaped radar domes, one used in air traffic control and one used in weather forecasting. It's these domes plus the fact that half of the summit is missing as a result of quarrying activity that makes the outline of Titterstone Clee Hill so distinctive from a distance.  We continued past former quarries and the radomes and on to the trig point from where there were lovely views back in the direction we had walked yesterday.

As we commenced our descent, there were good views in the direction were heading,  including to the first of Brown Clee's two summits, Clee Burf, and, below it,  the area around Toot View. We couldn't quite make out the log cabin itself, but we could see the white house opposite the turning onto "The Toot" and Old Lodge Coppice,  just to the east of Toot View and the farm on which it is located. The descent was initially quite steep and on a faint path (but not so faint that route finding was a problem) down a scrubby grass slope, with grazing sheep. When we remembered to look behind us there were initially good views to the radomes; from further down the slope the characteristic shape of Titterstone Clee Hill  became clearer.

We passed close to Callowgate Farm,  and shortly afterwards joined the route of the Jack Mytton Way, which appears to have gone through the farmyard of Callowgate Farm. We were now on Callow Lane which was unpleasantly muddy, though there were good views back to Titterstone Clee Hill, and we passed a pretty little pond.   It was a relief to reach a road at Bromdon and we could have followed this all the way down to the B4364 at Wheathill, but the Shropshire Way instead turns left onto the approach road to a farm. This provided a rather nice little section and it even gave me somewhere to sit in order to change my socks. 

And then the fun began! All we'd done in turning left was to start a small dog-leg so as to minimise our walk along the B4364, which is quite a busy road, so we knew we wouldn't need to go far in the direction we were heading (west) before turning north again, However, for some reason I'd expected  the right-hand turn to be onto another track, while the route actually goes through a small and not very obvious gate into a field. Fortunately Richard spotted a Shropshire Way sign on it. We crossed the field to footbridge, which we found without too much difficulty, but a fallen tree made crossing the bridge rather challenging. 

We emerged into a field of noisy sheep and lambs, who didn't seem best pleased by our arrival. Unfortunately our way out of the field involved opening a gate that had been firmly tied to with twine and it took Richard quite some time to manage  to disentangle it, and all the while the sheep were watching us and complaining. That was the last of our real challenges before we reached the road, though there was another "interesting" gate which was actually a piece of wire mesh fencing tied to the two sides of the gap that we needed to go through. After all that, we did wonder if it would have been easier to stick to roads all the way, though that would have been potentially more dangerous and almost certainly less memorable.

We crossed straight over the B-road, now on Stage 7 (Wheathill to Wilderhope Manor) of the official Shropshire Way route. However, we weren't much more than a mile as the crow-flies, and maybe two miles on our walking route, from our destination for today.  After descending from Titterstone Clee Hill we knew we'd start to ascend towards Brown Clee Hill at some point, and indeed we had already undulated up and down a bit. However it was somewhat disappointing to realise that the track we were on was descending steadily, passing Coldgreen Farm and on to Coldgreen Dingle. The compensation was the nice views to the Thorn Lane/Old Lane Coppice area up to our right.

From Coldgreen Dingle we were definitely climbing uphill again, past a  house at Newton and then steeply on a wooded track. This took us up to Thorn Lane. The official route of the Shropshire Way continues on the opposite site of the lane, but, after stopping for lunch, we turned right, heading to Toot View. It was pleasant, interesting walking, at long last with views up to Toot View itself and, in the opposite direction, back to Titterstone Clee. However, we descended and climbed again, and after passing a little chapel, we turned onto "The Toot" (the track that provides the vehicular access to Toot View and a selection of other buildings) and climbed up through the Old Lodge Coppice.

The track turned to the left, away from the wood, now passing  several calves and their mothers. The immediate approach to Toot View and the owners' farm is steepy downhill and there are wonderful views in all directions.  It had been a lovely walk, but we weren't  keen on the prospect of starting the following leg by walking back to the point where we'd left the Shropshire Way, with the loss of height that would bring and  the climb that would be needed to get back to the level of the cottage. We stopped at Toot View for a cup of tea, then drove back to the Titterstone Clee car park to collect Richard's car, but while I returned straight to the cottage to do some work, Richard went on to do some shopping. Later (after waiting for some rain to pass), Richard went out for another little walk, and he returned with the good news that he'd found a direct route up to the Shropshire Way. That provided a wonderful start to our following leg.