Wilderhope Manor to Much Wenlock

I didn't have great expectations for today. The car journeys involved were slightly longer and more fiddly than I really like to make in separate cars (though, to be fair, none were much more than 30 minutes) and the walk itself, along the line of Wenlock Edge, didn't particularly appeal. We'd been to Wenlock Edge before, when on holiday with the children in Shropshire in 1993  (and checking my photographs after writing this I see that Richard and I also visited in 2010; I do remember being in the area for work sometime around then) and my memory is of a slope that was so thickly covered in trees that we couldn't see the view.  It wasn't the most exciting of walks, but it was better than I'd expected. We left Richard's car in the National Trust Wenlock Edge car park (SO613997) near Much Wenlock and went to buy petrol then drove the relatively short distance back the National Trust car park at Wilderhope Manor (SO545938), where we'd also parked yesterday. The approach to Wilderhope Manor was again along a narrow road with rather unpromising passing places, but today we drove down the narrow road from the north, a shorter distance.

Wilderhope Manor is only open as a National Trust attraction on Sunday and Monday afternoons, and I suspect it is not very often used as a Youth Hostel, so we were not surprised to have the car park to ourselves today. Steps from the back of the car park (which is open 24/7) led directly onto the Shropshire Way. We climbed across a field with lots of buttercups and the view opened up behind us, over Wilderhope Farm and back the way we walked yesterday.  We reached the wooded area, with the steep slope heading down through it, to the north, but we turned right before the wood began, and followed the edge of the wood, with pretty views to our right across more buttercup field, with undulating countryside beyond. The Abdon Burf summit of Brown Clee came into view, distinctive because of its characteristic radio masts.

Our route headed into the trees and, a little bit further on,  down the slope, crossing the B4371 (the road we'd driven along) part-way down. It was all very pleasant; so far so good. At the bottom of the slope the views opened up to the north-west. and we turned right onto what appeared to be a disused railway line; it was! The track headed back into the trees and it wasn't unpleasant walking. However, as you'd expect for a railway line, it stayed at a constant height and it was mostly straight; in other words it was a bit boring! We passed just one bench, too early for lunch and, further on, there was a delay while Richard sorted out our route tracking. It had reported that it couldn't get an accurate enough location, so Richard had to turn the acceptable accuracy right down; the issue may have been partly due to the hill to our right and partly due to the trees, but we were suspicious that there was a problem with a GPS satellite too (we'd also had problems with the directions given by Google Maps when driving out of Much Wenlock).

After nearly 3 miles on the disused railway line, our route turned off it, somewhat unintuitively to the left - and quite steeply downhill (we clearly hadn't been at the bottom of the slope before!). After a pleasant walk through the trees we turned right onto a road and proceeded to climb up the hill again. Thankfully it was a minor road. We passed the line of the old railway line, but it looked very overgrown, so one is forced to conclude that the descent and immediate ascent had been for a good reason. We emerged back onto the busier B4371, thankfully just a few yards from the Presthope Car Park, which we turned into. Our path  led off from the far end of the car park and the guidebook correctly describes it as "undulating" from the point. A short distance along, a wooden structure (probably intended to stop people following the wrong route) provided somewhere for us to lean against while eating our lunch. A family group with a tiny baby in a sling came past. 

The undulations continued, past the old Knowle quarry, with lime kilns (which I think we have visited before) nearby. The Shropshire Way took us past the open tops of the kilns, but a short diversion for a more conventional view. We also passed several signs to "Major's Leap" and the photo shows Richard at a location which might have been the place where, during the English Civil War,  the royalist Major Thomas Smallman of Wilderhope Manor threw himself and his horse off the cliff so as to escape Cromwell's troops who were chasing him. Legend has it that the horse was killed but Smallman's fall was broken by a tree and he was able to go on to Shrewsbury by foot so as to deliver the important documents he was carrying.

We passed the enormous and more modern Lea Quarry on our right, but that is also disused now; we spotted an enormous timber store within the quarry  apparently for processing into wood chips for biomass heating. Eventually the quarry ended and the various named paths took different routes down into Much Wenlock. The Shropshire Way's route was circuitous but provided us with views ahead to The Wrekin (nicely described in the guidebook as "an afforested whaleback") and took us through yet another disused quarry where black sheep were grazing.

 We emerged onto the B4371 just before its junction with the A458 and we walked down to Much Wenlock, an attractive little town. We walked along High Street to The Square and admired the picturesque old Guildhall. We stopped our route tracker here, thinking this was the end of the leg, but then we walked on to the Priory, just for interest, and realised we were still following the route of the Shropshire Way, so we later added that bit in. Returning to the town centre, we bought some birthday cards and I drank my way through an enormous pot of tea at "Tea on the Square".