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TelfordWalk Details
The Walk: |
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Following a four-month break from walking following the birth of my daughter Emily, our plan had been to restart and kick off 2007 with a trip to the Shropshire Hills. However, a section of the Capital Ring had somehow managed to sneak in first. Nevertheless, we were both still looking forward to a trip to a part of Britain that neither of us had seen before, and come February we decided there was enough daylight for a decent day’s bagging. Cathy and Jus said they might join us later in the day – our proposed departure time of 6am seemed disagreeable to them.
The Wrekin stood proud and lonely as we approached. It’s unusual in not being part of a hill range - it lies on an ancient tectonic faultline and is composed of volcanic ash and sediments. Local folklore tells a different tale. Once upon a time there was a giant who was so annoyed with the people of Shrewsbury that he’d decided to carry a shovelful of soil to the River Severn to dam it and thus flood the town. On the way he met a cobbler carrying a sack of worn out shoes, and asked him how far it was to Shrewsbury. The quick-thinking footwear-fixer said something like “ooh, you’ve got miles to go. I’ve worn out this whole sack of shoes walking from there”. The giant was so dispirited that he dumped his soil there and then, to form the Wrekin. It may be this legend, the shape of the hill, the unusual name, or the outstanding views from the summit, but something calls people from far and wide to climb the Wrekin. We were astonished at the number of cars here already. We headed up through woods on the main “tourist” path, a wide track, which passed a toilet block that was very definitely closed, and well on the way to dereliction – a bit of a shame, as I could have definitely used it.
The path steepens significantly at two points. These are remnants of the iron age hill fort that used to sit atop the hill and are known as Hell Gate and Heaven Gate – you can actually say you went through Heaven and Hell to reach the top of this hill! Divine intervention apart, we were drawn onwards by a radio mast known lyrically (and rather optimistically!) as the “Beacon on the Wrekin”. Fortunately we took time to look backwards and see the magnificent quarried face of the Ercall rising out of the mist behind us.
There were a lot less people on the summit than had been suggested by the number of parked cars and walkers at lower levels. There’s a path all the way around the Wrekin at about 200 metres up, and I wondered if a lot of people were walking around this rather than up to the summit. If they were, they’d certainly missed out on great summit views today! We’d decided to turn our walk into a circular one by heading down from the far end of the Wrekin, over Little Hill, and then back along one of the mid-level paths. We headed off the far end of the hill in surprising solitude, but our planned route was very quickly interrupted by a small rocky outcrop on the left that we just had to stroll up onto. From here we saw another taller, pointier outcrop and headed down towards it. This one actually required the occasional use of a hand on the way up, which I guess technically makes it a scramble albeit only one of grade 0.5 or so! Once up it afforded the perfect opportunity for hero-pose photos in front of the sun (somehow the ones that Jim took of me made it look either like the sun was shining out of my bottom, or that I had a case of terminal flatulence). Another even sharper pinnacle tempted us further down the hillside. There are rocks on the OS map labelled as Needle’s Eye, and references to “threading the Needle” on the web. I had not been able to establish which of the three outcrops was the needle; nor had I been able to establish how to thread it. Having climbed them all, we felt we must have achieved this though! Now we were half way down the hillside, we decided that we weren’t going to do our planned walk after all. Instead we plummeted directly down through woods on a faint, vertiginous path until we reached the mid-level circular walk. On the way a miserable nonce listening to an MP3 player glared at us and refused to respond to our cheery hellos. We wondered if he was enjoying his walk. A few minutes later we were back at the car, sporting huge grins. Despite
being a total honeypot, the Wrekin had been a truly marvellous hill –
one of our favourite “quick bags” to date. Just a mile from
the M54 with an easy ascent, it has great views and is lots of fun. Why
not drop in if you’re passing?
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In
the event I was suffering from the squitts and we didn’t leave until
7am. This was still early enough to get us to the foot of the Wrekin before
9am. On the journey up we had an odd mix of sunshine and thick fog; we
hoped it wasn’t going to be yet another decent hill ruined by hill
fog or low cloud. We’d had a run of bad luck in this respect (Snowdon,
Walbury Hill, Margery Hill, and Worcestershire Beacon amongst others)
and felt we were due a break. I especially wanted good weather on the
Wrekin as it was a hill that I’d been longing to climb since I’d
seen its distinctive profile as I drove to Shrewsbury with my wife some
three years before. 
Five
minutes up the hill, Jim uttered those heart-freezing words “where’s
my wallet?” Scared he’d left it in full view on the car seat,
he left his rucksack with me and went sprinting back from whence we came.
Whilst he was gone, a succession of strange walkers came down the hill.
It emerged that a bewhiskered fellow in a kilt, a one legged man on crutches,
and a family with toddlers had all been up and down the hill before us.
Jim soon returned still looking worried, to discover that his wallet had
been in his rucksack all the time. Things were not going well, and we
tried to compensate by going up the track at a fair old lick. Despite
this we struggled to make much headway on the super-fit local dog walkers!
We passed a house (which I wouldn’t fancy driving up to) which even
at this early hour was offering tea to passing walkers. Normally we’d
have been very tempted, but it would have been shameful to stop walking
after a mere ten minutes. Instead we took a sharp left up a slightly steeper
and more open path, where the odd bit of bare rock started to show through
from underneath. The ground was increasingly frost-ridden.
We
came over Heaven Gate and on to the flat and grassy hilltop in bright
sunshine, but were in for a meteorological surprise. Looking around us
from the summit topograph we were amazed to find the view below completely
obscured by cloud, with just a few summits (and one factory chimney to
the south-west) poking up through. (When Jim first saw the factory chimney
in his camera screen he thought he’d got something on the lens –
it wasn’t until we saw it on the computer screen at home that we
discovered the truth!). It was a cloud inversion, our first one, and a
damn fine one to boot! We could clearly make out Brown Clee Hill, the
Long Mynd and the distinctive Caer Caradoc in the distance, with just
a hint of the long, low Wenlock Edge also poking through. I’ve always
wanted to see this phenomenon, and had been slightly worried it wouldn’t
live up to my expectations. But it did - in all my years of walking, this
is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen. Now I just need to
see a Brocken Spectre and my work will be done!