The Shropshire Hills - Marshalling the Marshals' 100 (29/4-2/5/2011)

By Duncan Smith

Friday 29^th April. Brown Clee Hill

DISTANCE:       10.2 miles

ASCENT:          1775 ft

TIME:                3 ½ hours.

One must thank Prince William and Kate Middleton for getting married today, thereby creating an extra day's Bank Holiday and increasing our Shropshire weekend to four days. Not that Steve Osborne or I watched the wedding; we had better things to do. Our task this weekend was to provide the breakfast stop on the LDWA Marshalls 100 and of course to do as much walking as possible.

Steve and I drove down on Friday morning, had a butty stop in Church Stretton, and then drove 15 miles or so of difficult to navigate six foot wide double banked roads hoping that no Ford Transits would come the other way. A Ford Transit came the other way, damn! Eventually we managed to find the unexpectedly large and almost full car park at Cockshutford. The route I planned to use, devised by mixing routes from Shropshire Walks web sites and a TGO article, cunningly avoids ascending Brown Clee for as long as possible. Instead we circuited the North West flanks via Abdon, where after a slight problem distinguishing a hidden footpath from next doors obvious approach drive, we passed the old Abdon village church then partly ascended the lower slopes of Brown Clee heading towards Hillside. Only now and on the north east flank did we encounter the main roadway built for the summit coal and iron ore quarries and head upwards. Even this circles round, passing around the old mine dumps, ponds and ruined buildings until eventually hitting the summit communications masts and trig point from the south east. Brown Clee is the highest hill in Shropshire and should provide excellent views but not today, as the weather was so dull that it was barely possible to see Wenlock Edge just five miles away; a great shame. After a butty stop we continued south over heathland, passing the Five Springs with its attractive views down to Cockshutford to arrive at Brown Clee’s subsidiary top, Clee Burf. There are more masts and quarry remains here. We continued south and down to Blackford before swinging back north on a contouring path back to Cockshutford. This was a pleasant stretch and Steve demonstrated his skill at wildflower recognition. Finally we examined the prehistoric Nordy Bank hillfort with its well preserved ramparts before returning to my car, a good walk done barring the dull weather.

At Lydham, our marshalling base for the Shropshire 100, there were more problems; no key for the village hall. Steve tried his mobile phone to contact the key holder, but as usual these defective line of sight instruments are of little use in lightly populated hill country. Fortunately Lydham is a small hamlet, everyone knows everyone else, so Carol, the Key holder, was soon found. Shortly afterwards we were joined by Roger Hand and Carl Harris. They had had a touristing day following on from a Shropshire 100 reconnaissance. Peter Schick soon followed; he was preparing for the Marshalls 100 tomorrow. Apologies were received from John Knight (local council electioneering) and Bridget Knight (broken arm from skiing) who could not make it.

Dinner was at the Carlisle Arms in BishopsCastle for a good meal. There are many fine medieval buildings in this village and Roger (who did architecture to ‘A’ level at school) was much impressed.

Saturday 30^th April. Knighton to Lydham Shropshire 100 Reconnaissance

DISTANCE:       21 miles

ASCENT:          3725 ft

TIME:                7 ½ hours.

Quentin Blagg joined us early in the morning whilst Peter left for Ludlow to join the Marshals 100 walk. A quick glance at the map convinced us that our best plan for the day was to join Roger and Carl in their Knighton to Lydham reconnaissance so we took two cars down the Knighton. Knighton is one of the many small and a bit gone-to-seed towns that dot this area of Powys and Shropshire, most hardly larger than villages. It lies just in Powys so only a few minutes’ walk saw us back into Shropshire. A short, steep, climb, easy on fresh legs, but less so for 100 walkers who have already done 37 miles, took us up from the River Teme to the Offa’s Dyke path. This splendid path offers fine views of the Teme valley below, most of which would be missed by 100 walkers who do this section at night. They are missing a fine walk. The path crosses a valley then continues to undulate up to Llanfair Hill, providing the best views of the well preserved Offa’s Dyke that I have seen. Unfortunately the lighting was wrong for photography. Here we departed Offa’s Dyke down to the next 100 checkpoint at Newcastle (not much castle), a pretty village. Back onto Offa’s Dyke another climb took us past Graig Hill and through attractive woodland past Hergan then through pasture and woods to near Churchtown. Now we departed from the Offa’s Dyke path to join the Shropshire Way to the next checkpoint at Mainstone. There was some confusion here as to where the checkpoint was (it seemed obvious to me) and so for some reason we went ¼ mile in blatantly the wrong direction before sense was regained. The Shropshire Way rejoined, we climbed up by Reith Top then downhill to walk alongside the popular streamside path to Colebatch. A sharp left turn took us into BishopsCastle. Beyond here avoiding a campsite caused some road walking before rejoining the Shropshire Way to Lydham. Cars then had to be collected from Knighton, a forty mile round trip.

This was a fine walk in pleasant countryside, very easy to navigate, at least in daytime, the Offa’s Dyke and Shropshire Ways being well signposted making navigation a doddle even with an old 1:50,000 map. Paths were firm and dry for easy walking but caused blister problems for Carl (quite badly) and myself. The route undulates a bit, about as much as some WhitePeak walks but this provided little problem, at least on fresh legs, but the tired legs of 100 walkers may have some trouble. Yesterday’s dull weather had gone and views were fresh and clear with a bit of wind on the tops.

There was some discussion on the amount of ascent in this walk. My own calculations (off a 1:50,000 map, not ideal) are:-

                                                MINE                OFFICIAL

Knighton to Newcastle   1703 ft              1800 ft

Newcastle to Mainstone1207 ft              1200 ft

Mainstone to Lydham                   813 ft                800 ft

                                                _______            _______

                                                3723 ft              3800 ft

My mileage is from the car park in Knighton and includes the Mainstone diversion so is a little greater than the official mileage.

Sunday 1^st May. Marshalling the Marshals

Tonight was our checkpoint duty, starting at 1:00am and supposedly finishing by 10:00am, it was our job to provide breakfast to all entrants.

Our first guest was Chris Miles. He hopped in at 1:15 looking as fresh as a daisy, not like someone who has just walked, run, skipped and jumped 57 miles. He was soon gone and followed shortly afterwards by Julian Brown and Dave Findel-Hawkins both looking fresh too. Thereafter walkers came in looking increasingly less energetic, their bags heavier until by mid morning some of them looked shattered. One lady fell asleep at the breakfast table and another man lay down on one of our sleeping bags for a couple of hours until his wife (also walking) arrived and woke him up. We fed them as best as we could. Duties were shared, Roger doing most of the cooking, indeed scrambling 60 eggs without breaking one shell, Steve helping with the cooking & serving, Quentin booking people in, Carl sorting out the overnight bags whilst I made the tea (a couple of cups looked a little sad I’m afraid) and performed endless amounts of washing up. I trust that we sent them all away happy.

We had some problems with the facilities. The village hall, big enough for the marshals walk, is too small for the main event and it will be hard to cook enough food and store all the bags. The toaster is dodgy too though we got it working in the end. The East Lancs group are manning this check point on the main event and will have a hard time of it though we were assured, most definitely by one lady, that they are very good at it. In my personal opinion a fried breakfast is the wrong menu for this event; porridge is much easier to digest, boosts the carbohydrate stores and is much easier to prepare. What other 100 walkers would think of that I do not know.

Our last walkers strolled in at 11:00am, an hour after we should have shut and had a leisurely ¾ hour breakfast before strolling off again, hopefully to finish sometime. Sad news was that Peter had had to pull out at Knighton after having had bad stomach problems. This is a great shame as Peter has completed 28 hundreds over the years. All gone and we felt as tired as our visitors.

Sunday 1st May. The Stiperstones

DISTANCE:       6 miles approx

ASCENT:          1000 ft

TIME:                2 ½ to 2 ¾ hours.

With our guests all gone we had an afternoon free to enjoy but no energy to enjoy it with. Roger and Carl went touristing around BishopsCastle; Quentin went on a bike ride whilst Steve and I decided on a gentle stroll around the Stiperstones. We parked at ‘The Bog’ and circled round to join the main ridge over the Stiperstones from the south. This path, the one true route over the Stiperstones is avoided by the 100. There is a good reason for this; the path is very rough, made of innumerable vertically tilted quartzite blocks it is very hard to walk on for any distance. 100 walkers do not do the Stiperstones, they bypass them - the path is too tough. Steve and I managed to scramble up to the trig point on Manstone Rock in spite of a very fresh easterly wind but declined the Devils Chair scramble; it was too windy and we were too tired. Beyond PerkinsBeach the path eases and becomes a bridleway. Here we were able to explore another of the Stiperstones features (also missed by 100 walkers), its pretty western dingles. We descended the many steps of Minton Dingle, wondered if a father with his little daughter on his shoulders would make it to the top, then reascended until we arrived at the ‘100’ bypass path which we did in reverse. Concession paths took us back to ‘The Bog’. All in all we did a fair exploration of this hill and the clear, if windy, weather gave us good views.

Sunday night. The Big Blues Night. Quentin had prewarned everyone that a good Blues Band was on in Clun and he was going no matter what. In the event, Duncan was pressganged into supporting him, and the intrepid pair duly arrived at the historic Fort village. After a quick recce of the site, and Duncan getting a few pics in, it was time to check out the venue. It was heaving, so a quick detour took us to Newcastle, scene of the previous days ' off piste' activity. A nice Pub meal set us up, and it was a hot foot back to Clun. The gig soon got going with Duncan struggling to get it and Quentin on another planet. All good stuff and added to enormously, by a little girl bopping away, soon to be joined by a 30 year old male who almost leapt through the ceiling doing his weird dance. As one local put it, 'I don't know what he's been on but I bet it was good'. 2 hours sleep in the last 24 hours caught up, and 2 very sleepy boys hot footed it back to base to crash out. Zzzzzz.

Monday 2nd May. The Long Mynd

DISTANCE:       8.2 miles

ASCENT:          1350 ft

TIME:                3 ¼ hours.

The splendid ridge of the Long Mynd is also on the 100 mile menu. They ascend it from Bridges YHA then walk the long Portway along the ridge down to Plowden. But the Long Mynd has much else to offer, namely its beautiful eastern dales and it was our intent to explore these. Our day would be short as we wanted to get home and was made even shorter when a walkers overnight bag was found hidden amongst ours. Quentin had to take it back to Ludlow. Matt, the main organiser, after two sleepless nights, had just about forgotten who he was. Roger and Carl had left to reconnoitre the Stiperstones sections of the route and Osama Bin Laden had been shot by the Americans.

We met up in the Carding Mill valley, the main car park but strangely quiet. ‘It will fill up later’ a lady dog walker assured us. The walk up Carding Mill is very fine. We took Motts Road onto the ridge and followed the Portway to the summit at Pole Bank. A viewpoint points to all potential vistas and such a clear day it was, that many of them could be seen, including most of the terrain that we had walked over during the weekend. It was very windy again and I wondered how a lightly clad female jogger could keep warm but she did not seem bothered. Descending towards Round Hill we detoured to Narnells Rock. This, as I hoped it would, provided splendid vistas down into Ashes Hollow. We descended steeply down the hillside for a butty stop in the more sheltered hollow. The walk down Ashes Hollow was the delight of the day; it is very beautiful, made even prettier by more lady joggers who just happened to get into my camera lens. From the bottom of the Hollow my map shows no paths back to Carding Mill, only the road, but we were convinced that there was a route and indeed there was. We tried a path on speculation, up over the Ashes then through pasture, woodland and a Granddad-sized tyre swing back to the road. Immediately another path was found leading through flower-bedecked woods. After passing a few houses path three was found around Rectory woods, better than the rest, then a final path took us down to the Carding Mill café. By now Carding Mill was full - it was heaving with humanity. Presuming the café full, we went back to our cars then back to my favourite bun shop in Church Stretton for toasted teacakes. This had been another fine walk, if rather short.