Was a little annoyed Saturday. Normally, I manage to plan the weekends route in advance taking into account weather, what to take and similar. However, due to having to go to Scotland for a couple of days and other unpredictables, I failed to do this by Saturday morning. I wasn’t too concerned as I had planned to go out on Sunday but on review of the weather (Saturday nice, Sunday not) I decided to go out Saturday. I had’nt got a clue where I was going to go and as Church Stretton is never a mistake. I know it well enough now for poor weather to not deter me and its relatively close by.
I hadn’t done a big walk for a few weeks so I decided on a variation on the previous big walk over the south Shropshire hills. I started by parking on the north end of The Lawley. I would then walk over this gradually ascending hill then down to the foot of Caer Caradoc. At the top, I would bear eastwards through Church Stretton to pick up some munchies on way to Long Mynd.
Carding Mill Valley was my planned ascent route and I particularly enjoyed walking past Light Spout Hollow. At the top I wondered along the plateau to descend down my favorite part of Long Mynd – Ashes Hollow. This stroll was made the more pleasant by the company of an ex vicar / church geezer. He was raving about long distance walking remenising about his own travels across south of France and Pyrenees. I haven’t seen Ashes Hollow so in spate and the scrambling was wet to say the least.
At the bottom I met with the A49 and turned left to tackle Ragleith Hill which wasn’t too bad. My final hill of the day was to be Hope Bowder hill, the plan being to descend and skirt Caer Caradoc and parallel the Lawley. However, I felt I had enough energy and skin on my feet to do another crossing of Caer Caradoc though I couldn’t repeat the Lawley. I finally got back to the car as it was turning dark. I blame the lack of light for the loss of my North Face beanie – oh how I miss you…
In the end I measured 21.5 miles with about 1250 metres of ascent and my legs felt like it until Tuesday 
No photos as I couldn’ t be bothered.