Mountain Portrait
Set within one of the most geologically complex landscapes on Earth, Jim Perrin finds this volcanic Shropshire summit utterly captivating
Jim Perrin praises the volcanic Shropshire summit of Caer Caradoc
THE HINT FROM JOHN WOOD [below] about viewing this hill from the Long Mynd is a shrewd one. Geologically, the hill group of which it’s a prominent member is one of the most complex places on earth. Descend at winter twilight from the Long Mynd to Church Stretton and the sense of this is overpowering. A haze across the Severn plain obscures all distance and sense of scale. Ragleth Hill, Caer Caradoc, The Lawley, The Wrekin – the Uricon Volcanics to give them their fabulous geological name – stand aloft white and spectral, western flanks gleaming against a grey gather of night. They’re like a pod of huge whales heading north in line astern. They could be the Mamores or any wild place in the Scottish Highlands, so captivating is the drama of this landscape, so mysteriously concealing its intimate scale.
To the south the petrified wave of Wenlock Edge stretches for twenty miles across the landscape, with the Clee Hills as Shropshire’s last hill-bastion beyond it. Westerly are The Stiperstones, roughest and rockiest upland this side of the Snowdonia ridges; west again is the leonine bulk of Corndon Hill, actually in Wales thanks to an aberrant loop of border that lassoes it in (and then loops back to allow Shropshire’s claim on another tract of little-travelled hill country, Clun Forest). But the border – historically an aberrant entity – is best ignored along this stretch of the Welsh March, where all belongs truly within that Shropshire Hills regional entity.
As with The Wrekin, none of these are big hills – the highest point in Shropshire is Abdon Burf on Brown Clee Hill, which only reaches 1770 feet (539 metres). But they’re uniquely atmospheric, rich in legend, history and literary association, laced right through with a network of right-to-roam commons and well-signed, well-maintained footpaths. You can take your pick from the Shropshire Way with its myriad variations, the Jack Mytton Way, Wild Edric’s Way, The Marches Way, the Severn Way, the Onny Trail and several others besides; not to mention good old Offa’s Dyke Path, all of them thronging in normal times with good pubs, good cafés, good discerning company. Where better then for walking, even in the cold months of the year?
I remember leaving Church Stretton one winter’s day for a hill as disconsonant with its surroundings as that Welsh name of Caer Caradoc is at this distance to the east of Offa’s Dyke. East and west, its neighbouring hill-forms are the rolling, stretching ones of the Long Mynd and Wenlock Edge, which seem to recoil a little from its eruptive upthrust of Uriconium lava, its dragon’s crest of cooled magma. The little town at its foot is tea-shopped, churchy, its streets crowding under rounded slopes, which:
“On gloomy days… redouble the sombre heaviness of the sky And nurse the thunder. Their dense growth shuts the narrow ways Between the hills and draws
Closer the wide valleys’ jaws.”
(Hugh MacDiarmid)
Caer Caradoc doesn’t do that. It causes sight to lift and soar. You leave Church Stretton by plashy lanes and cow-patted, meadow-skirting paths, cross a footbridge over a trickle of a stream barely a mile from town, and above you – the Three Fingers Rock springing from it, challenging as a lowered portcullis – rises the southern bastion of the hill. The climb at first is through open woods of ash and scattered, aged hawthorns. It rears up, leaves them behind, the slope of greensward foot-scarred and steep. Outcrops of lava, weathered, buttress the gables of the hill; the path mounts unremittingly.
But not for long. Soon you can rock back on your heels, admire the spreading view, see the quartzite crags along the Stiperstones ridge peep out northerly from behind the Long Mynd. Soon Wenlock Edge, its elongated wave of limestone held through aeons at the point of breaking, rolls into view round the shoulder of Hope Bowdler Hill. Soon enough you enter the double ramparts of the great Iron Age hill-fort that surrounds Caer Caradoc’s summit, with The Wrekin hanging in misty air to the north-east and banks of cloud westerly breaking and streaming away from the distant hills of Wales.
After a time on the summit, I ambled down. The light of evening was filmy, moisture-laden. It streamed through Lightspout Hollow and Ashes Hollow and Devilsmouth Hollow on the Long Mynd opposite. An ancient, decrepit hawthorn across the slope to my left, leafless and stark, was suddenly touched by the westering sun, the last remnant haws on its branches brilliant as garnets. Lovely!
“Just topping the 1,500 foot contour line, Caer Caradoc stands on the east side of the enchanting Vale of Stretton like a king of fable among his courtiers. The Lawley to the north, Helmeth, Hazler and Ragleth to the south and south-west, and the ridge formed by Hope Bowdler, Willstone and Cardington Hills south-eastward. The engaging shapes of this group are a neverfailing delight to the eye, especially when viewed from high up on the Long Mynd across the valley, or more comprehensively on a clear day from The Wrekin.” John Wood, Quietest Under the Sun (1944)