Toot View to Wilderhope Manor

This was essentially a walk of two halves: the first crossed the moorland summits of Brown Clee, Shropshire's highest hill, while the second half was lower level, through the Corve Valley and up to Wenlock Edge.  Our starting point  (in terms of walking) was our delightful holiday cottage, Toot View (at SO595832). Toot View is actually on the slopes of Brown Clee; the "Toot" that we viewed is marked on the OS map at SO594835 and most likely refers to one of the ridges on the southern flank of Clee Burf which is the southern summit of Brown Clee. We certainly had a good view up that way from the cottage as well as views to the west (towards Wales) and we'd have had good views back to Titterstone Clee Hill to the south if there hadn't been a belt of trees in the way. Toot View comes very highly recommended, for both its stunning location and its comfort.

Before walking anywhere, we needed to get a car to the end point of today's walk, the National Trust car park at Wilderhope Manor (SO545938). Since we couldn't drive over Brown Clee, we needed to drive around it, and the route we chose was  to the east, via the pretty villages of Burwarton, Cleobury North (where we turned left) and Ditton Priors, then  left at a monstrousity of a water tower conversion and along a minor road to Weston, where we turned left onto the B4368 to Hopecross.  That was all perfectly straightforward driving, but the approach to Wilderhope Manor involved a mile and a half on a single track road, with passing places, most of which were so rutted that I was very pleased we didn't have to use them. The final approach to the Manor was across National Trust with grazing sheep and lambs, then we made an unnecessary detour across the farmyard before reaching the carpark. Phew! We left Richard's car here and returned back the way we had come to leave my car safely back at the cottage. At last, we left  behind the calves, piglets and lambs of the farm on which Toot View is situated, and set off on our walk on our own route to re-join the Shropshire Way up on the Toot.

We climbed up the very steep slope from Toot View (and yes, it feels as steep when you're on foot as it does when you're in a car) then continued on the track towards Old Lodge Coppice, passing more cows/calves and sheep/lambs. We left the access route to Toot View at the Coppice, heading almost straight ahead through the trees. Because of Richard's exploration yesterday, he knew the way, and he also knew the point at which we needed to turn left and climb through the Coppice, At the top there was a gate and on the other side of that, we were rewarded by a Shropshire Way sign. We were around SO597836, at the point where official route of the Shropshire Way turns through a 90 degree angle to the left. Amazingly our diversion from the official route to take us via Toot View had only led us to omit about a kilometre of the Shropshire Way, Our JordanWalks route was perhaps twice that distance, but it had been pleasant walking and it was very satisfying to include the place we were staying.

From here we were on a reasonably good path across open moorland, heading slightly uphill towards the navigational relay mast on the Clee Burf summit. The heather must make it colourful up here later in the summer; it was a bit brown today, but we had sheep for company. We continued across the moorland, descending slightly to the "saddle" between Clee Burf and Abdon Burf, Brown Clee's second summit.  The correct route was less clear; we wandered about a bit and at one stage found ourselves heading slightly to the left (west) towards where we could see a person sitting at what looked like a junction of paths - then we realised that our route didn't go that way. We headed further to our right, to a field boundary, and followed along closer to that. Our maps apps reassured us that we weren't too far from the correct route, but on the ground it was less convincing. 

We reached the information point shown on the map at SO597854 and now we did head slightly further west across a rather boggy section. We reached a track with open views to  our left and more bog to the right; from a distance we'd wondered why the surface appeared white - it turned out that this was caused simply by lots of cotton grass. We continued on the track until the signposting indicated that our route turned right. We climbed up a rough but well-walked path to the two masts on the summit of Abdon Burf. There is also a view indicator here. The visibility wasn't particularly good, so we couldn't see a great distance, though we could see back to the mast on Clee Burf and the radomes on Titterstone Clee. It was good to be at the highest point in Shropshire, though the summits are not particularly pronounced; it's all much of a muchness.  It is probably this fact that led to several air crashes before radar coverage was available, with 23 allied and German airman losing their lives on Brown Clee in the second world war.  

From the Abdon Burf summit, we followed the tarmacked access road which headed briefly south before looping around towards the north of the summit, all the way descending gently and passing old quarry buildings. Somewhat unexpectedly, we came across a bench on the hillside, and given this was the first seating place we'd encountered, we decided on an early lunch. We then turned right and descended more steeply to the top of a wooded section and here we turned left along the edge of the wood. It was delightful.

The next bit was even more delightful. As the end of the wood we passed through a gate and continued on what the guidebook describes as "a grassy ride on a pastured balcony high above the Corve Valley". The views were lovely and a well-positioned sheep made for a good photograph.  We reached a sunken bridleway and descended down the hillside of Abdon Liberty. This brought us to a lane, and for the next mile or so we  followed a network of lanes and footpaths around Upper Earnstrey Park and on the Earnstrey Hall, now on the second, lower level, part of today's walk

Lower level it might have been, but boring it wasn't. One of the footpath sections involved walking across a couple of fields of cows with calves, a situation that always makes me anxious because cows are quite reasonably going to be protective of their offspring. We survived, both in terms of finding the route, which wasn't obvious, and not upsetting the cows and calves too much - and we even managed to notice the attractive building we were passing, Upper Earnstrey Park I think.  However, our way out of the second field involved a stile rather close to a barbed wire fence, and after Richard crossed it, I noticed a sock attached to the barbed wire that looked just like the ones I wear.  Now, as regular readers of these pages will be aware, I have rather sweaty feet, so I change my socks regularly when walking, and there is usually a damp pair of socks attached to the back of the rucksack; but now there was just one sock attached.  The sock wasn't just like the ones I wear, it was one of the ones I wear. I've lost socks this way before, so I was very happy not to have lost another one.

Moving on from socks to duck, to be precise one duck, with a shape like one of the plastic yellow ducks that a child might play with,,,but it was metal and at least a metre in each dimension, and it was surrounded by a good display of flag irises, just opposite Earnstrey Hall. The duck made us smile and Earnstrey Hall was another attractive building. We continued through undulating countryside and soon we had views to the church at Holdgate. Getting there was a bit more challenging! I don't think this bit of the Shropshire Way is much walked and the route of the Shropshire Way would have sent us along the edge of a field through an extensive bank of nettles! Fortunately we were able to walk slightly further out into the field, which resolved the issue.

We took advantage of a conveniently placed bench in the churchyard at Holdgate to stop for an apple, then we continued towards the ridge of Wenlock Edge. We initially took a track down the side of the churchyard, then crossed another field of cows and calves (which fortunately kept their distance from us) and continued down to a stream. We climbed to a lane, descended to another stream, then climbed again to the B4368, the road that we'd driven along earlier. 

We crossed almost straight over the B4368 and took the narrow-road-with-not-so-good-passing-places, also as driven along earlier. However, after a very short distance, we took a footpath on the right for the final section of today's walk. We climbed gently across a large field, complete the sheep and lambs, and with views back to Brown Clee opening up behind us. It was lovely and the Sun even came out! We didn't actually climb as much as I'd imagined we would, instead staying close to a stream and, after near the farm of Lower Stanway, we crossed then re-crossed the stream. 

Thus it was that at around 3.25pm we approached the pretty Wilderhope Manor. It is only open from 2-4pm on Sundays and Mondays, and the National Trust website says that last admissions are at 3.30pm, so we dashed to the car to change our shoes then sprinted to the entrance, perhaps slightly after 3.30pm. We needn't have worried; it's a rather unusual National Trust property,  run as a youth hostel, so they're not precious and they were happy to let us in to wander about wherever we wanted. There wasn't antique furniture to admire and I don't think I'd make a long journey specially to get inside, but since we were already there, it was good to see the rooms and spiral staircases;  it made a refreshing change from most National Trust properties. Wilderhope Manor is an Elizabeth I manor house but was bought and restored by the W.A. Cadbury Trust in 1936 and given to the National Trust on condition that it was used as a Youth Hostel. It's now only available as a youth hostel if you hire the whole place, and seems to be used mostly for weddings; this (understandably) has upset some die-hard youth hostellers who want youth hostels to be what they were when I was a teenager (when it was assumed you'd arrive under your own steam) but it gets rave reviews as a "special" wedding venue. 

After visiting Wilderhope Manor and having a wander around its grounds, we simply had a drive back to Toot View in Richard's car; it had been a good day.

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