Ludlow to Aston-on-Clun.

Day 4 Ludlow to Aston-on-Clun.  11.5 miles:        12 stiles

Today’s weather has been stunning; bright blue skies and pleasantly warm.  The boys had their shorts on, and the girls took their coats off!!

We started from the very picturesque town of Ludlow and walked through some lovely countryside and park land.  Not too many navigational issues - though we had walked 100 yards or so from the road at the start and (up hill of course) had to stop for a moment to check we shouldn’t have been down on another path.

Should we be down there? !!

 Carol and Phil walked with us for the first hour until we got to the lovely village of Broomfield.  They then peeled off to look at St Mary’s church which has an amazing painted ceiling and a memorial placque to Henry Hickman (1800 - 1830) who was the pioneer of anaesthesia and lived nearby.   They also visited the food centre - need I say more!  They were however looking to see what cheeses we could buy for our final evening meal; I understand there is a good Ludlow blue cheese we could try.

Once Carol and Phil left us, we carried on a fairly flat walk that seemed to go on for a long distance across many fields and quite a lot of stiles and gates; amazingly again, navigation was ok and there were several arrows at each gate, including one for walking with Offa.

 We had a coffee stop on a bank at the edge of a field.  Eventually we got to a beautiful part of the walk, all past ponds and streams and up through woods.  Up a big hill and to a road which took us to another path and a stop for lunch on a hill which we shared with some sheep!

Lunch time companions!

After lunch, we set off again and unfortunately had our first navigational error - you can see a spike up and down at the end of the chart above, which was of course a pretty major hill that we had to come back down again.  After that it was fine, all on roads or tracks and we met Carol and Phil about a mile from the finish.

Back quite early to the house, where everyone relaxed, drank tea and ate cake - today’s was Steve Y’s fruit cake (made with condensed milk - Mary Berry recipe).  Tonight is bangers and mash with onion gravy followed by jam tart cooked by the two Steve’s.  A games evening is in progress!