STIPERSTONES Shropshire
Experience the drama of a wild and atmospheric border landscape
I n the panorama visible from Stiperstones National Nature Reserve, you can count the number of buildings on one hand. Close your eyes and all you’ll hear is the melodic song of the skylark, high above.
Set between Shropshire’s Long Mynd ridge and the Welsh border, this dramatic quartzite rock ridge – the county’s second-highest hill – feels wonderfully remote. No wonder this landscape inspired the novelists DH Lawrence and Mary Webb.
Formed 480 million years ago, these unusual rocks were shattered during the Ice Age, leaving a series of jagged tors along the ridge’s reptilian spine. The most famous is the Devil’s Chair, where – on the longest night – the Devil is said to hold an audience with witches and evil spirits.
Visit on a sunny day and you’re more likely to startle nothing more sinister than a red grouse hiding among the upland heather.
A 650m all-ability trail forms the start of this route, enabling wheelchair and pushchair users to savour some of the remoteness and vistas of the Stiperstones.
1. GATTEN PLANTATION
Walk to the end of the car park and take the smaller wooden gate on the right. Resting places can be found at 50-metre intervals along this section, ideal for sitting and watching the Exmoor ponies and Hebridean sheep used to manage this landscape.
At the end of the trail, continue ahead on an obvious track. Pass through the Gatten Plantation (where conifers have been removed to restore the heathland), ignoring the side tracks on the left. Continue through a gate and trees on to a rougher path, emerging into a field. Follow the left-hand edge to a track, with Hollies Farm on the right.
2. WILD EDRIC
Continue ahead briefly, then bear left, up to a field corner. Go through a gate and continue climbing, to a stile. Legend tells that if you see a ghost galloping across these fields on horseback, then flee, for he warns of impending war. The spirit is known as Wild Edric – a Saxon leader driven to fury when William the Conqueror
snatched his land in the 11th century. He’s obviously still angry.
From here, Shepherd’s Rock (on your right) and the Devil’s Chair (on your left) thrust high into the skyline. In stormy weather, the quartzite’s composition attracts lightning strikes, often accompanied by thunder. In her 1917 novel The
Golden Arrow, Mary Webb’s characters refuse to cross these paths during storms.
Fork left after the stile, towards the Devil’s Chair, climbing to a junction on the top of the ridge.
3. THE DEVIL’S CHAIR
From the Devil’s Chair, tremendous views pull the eye westwards, across mid-Wales. Despite being just 71km (44 miles) from Birmingham city centre, the modern world feels a lifetime away from the Stiperstones.
Turn left and climb towards the Devil’s Chair. According to legend, it was formed when the Devil was carrying rocks in an apron. When the strings broke, the stones tumbled to form this mound. Take care here, for the path is rocky underfoot.
Meander between the Devil's Chair and a smaller outcrop to continue along the ridge, passing Manstone Rock, the highest point on the Stiperstones ridge at 536m and identifiable by its trig point. From
here, the path descends to a junction marked with a small circular cairn.
4. BACK TO PURPLE
Fork left and descend on a grassier route through the heather. The Back to Purple project – a partnership between Natural England, the Wildlife Trusts and local landowners that was launched in the 1990s – aims to restore the heather along the full length of the 9.7km-long (six-mile-long) Stiperstones ridge, improving the habitat for species that include emperor moths, green hairstreak butterflies and hairy wood ants. Pass through a gate beside an information panel on the project to return to the car park.