My Adventures 3: Malvern Hills Walk

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The Malvern Hills have been on my must do list for sometime, with the threat of another lockdown by the Government looming, I decided get out now and do it! So on Sunday the 18th October 2020 Pete and I set off for the Hills.

First View of the Malvern Hills as we approach by road. They look huge!

After 3 hours of driving we arrive and park up in a free spot roadside in West Malvern Road WR14 4BG.

After donning our boots and backpacks, we set off walking up West Malvern Road.

After a little road walking on this relatively quite road we reach the footpath that leads up to a car park and out onto the hills.

The Malvern Hills are a range of hills in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit of the hills affords a panorama of the Severn Valley with the hills of Herefordshire and the Welsh mountains, parts of thirteen counties, the Bristol Channel, and the cathedrals of Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford.

They are known for their spring water – initially made famous by the region's many holy wells, and later through the development of the 19th-century spa town of Great Malvern, a process which culminated in the production of the modern bottled drinking water.

The Malvern Hills are part of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with scenic views over both Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The Hills run north–south for about 8 mi (13 kilometres), in between Great Malvern and the village of Colwall, and overlook the River Severn valley to the east, with the Cotswolds beyond. The highest point of the hills is the Worcestershire Beacon at 425 metres (1,394 ft) above sea level (OS Grid reference SO768452). The hills are famous for their natural mineral springs and wells, which were responsible for the development of Great Malvern as a spa in the early 19th century. Until recently, Malvern water was bottled commercially on a large scale and sold worldwide.

It was certainly misty that morning and the views were non-existent. I was desperately hoping the mist will lift, be a shame not to see any of the views.

We make our way to the point where the path splits many directions.

We head off to North Hill.

The mist is still really thick and we can just catch glimpses of Great Malvern and we can hear the Church bells ringing below.

We walk through a gate and up a steep incline to the top of North Hill.

We stop halfway up sitting on some rocks to have lunch. Watching the sheep and other people puffing their way up the hill.

We make our way down a very steep path, taking care not to stumble back down to the path we walked on earlier. Then making the decision to follow another steep path down into Great Malvern centre.

We walk down Happy Valley and onto St Ann's Road

To our right up St Ann's Road is Aldwyn Towers, Now apartments. This was built in 1850, an Italianate design in red brick with stucco dressings.

To our left is a great house with unusual wooden carvings.

At the bottom of St Ann's Road is the Unicorn Inn on Bellevue Terrace.

Blue Plaque on its wall claiming that C.S.Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) used to frequent this pub whilst in the area.

We walked down onto Church Street where we see the church responsible for the bell ringing we heard in the mist earlier.

In front of the church was a bench commemorating Florence Nightingale and her connection to Great Malvern.

Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 and is thought to have made her first visit to Malvern in 1848 because a trip to Europe was cancelled due to the revolution taking place there. She returned in 1857 and 1858 due to illness and exhaustion after her work in the Crimean War to seek an improvement in her health by taking the water cure. She also returned in 1867, much of the time between being spent in quite poor health. Whether the water cure helped or not, in later years her condition did improve, and Florence went on to live a busy and influential life until she died at the age of 90 in 1910. Indeed she once claimed "I owe three years of (not useless) life to the Water Cure at Malvern".

Now we walk into The Priory grounds, unfortunately we couldn't go inside.

According to the Worcester Monastic Annals the building work began in 1085.

The Priory was built for thirty monks and was much smaller than it is now.

Not long after the time of the Battle of Hastings St Wulstan, the Bishop of Worcester, encouraged a monk, called Aldwin, in the work of founding a monastery in what was then the Malvern Chase. (A chase was an unenclosed area of land where wild animals are preserved for hunting!)

The Priory was built on land which belonged to Westminster Abbey, under the control of the crown at that time. Malvern was in the diocese of Powick but the Priory was subservient to Westminster Abbey and so it had 'Priory' status.

Having allegiance to Westminster Abbey, there were altercations between the Priory and the Bishop of Worcester over the years.

It is reported that in 1286 the Archbishop, the King and even the Pope were involved in these disagreements.

We walked through the priory gates, pass the closed Malvern Museum onto Abbey Road and pass The Abbey Hotel wrapped in crimson red Virginia Creeper.

The Abbey Hotel and its landscaped gardens stand on the site of ancient monastic buildings. Today the Priory Church and Gateway (now the Malvern Museum) are all that remain of Malvern’s Benedictine monastery. After the monastic community was disbanded during Henry VIII’s reign, the Priory Church and Priory House were bought for £20 by villagers. The rest was acquired by Sir John Knotsford in 1545. Around 1600 the Priory’s residence was replaced by a large three-storey stone house named Abbey House. By the mid 1700s it had become a lodging house. In 1757 full board cost 15 shillings per week.

When the Water Cure was brought to Malvern by Dr. Wilson in 1842, the number of visitors put pressure on the hotels and lodging houses. In 1848, after failing to sell the old Abbey House to the Parish for £3,000, William Archer had it demolished and built in its place the present Abbey Hotel.

During World War II, The Abbey was first commandeered by the Ministry of Information, who held secret meetings in what is now the Shaw Suite. The building then acted as the headquarters of Belgian refugees before being taken over by the RAF. The Abbey was later extended to accommodate more guests and provide extra conference and banqueting facilities, including the 300-capacity Elgar Suite.

We walk on up Wells Road and into Rose Banks Gardens.

Rose Bank Gardens lies on the edge of the Malvern Hills overlooking Great Malvern. It started life as the grounds of Rose Bank, a Regency house that was gifted to the Town in 1918 by Mr Dyson Perrins and subsequently demolished in 1959.

It is part of the ‘Route to the Hills‘ from Great Malvern Station and offers access to the Malvern Hills and St Ann’s Well via the ’99 steps’ foot path. Facilities and attractions in the gardens include: terraced pathways, Victorian gas lamps, the Diamond Jubilee Sculpture of Two Buzzards by Walenty Patel and excellent views over Malvern.

We take a path leading back uphill to visit St Ann's Well.

We stop for a while collecting Horse Chestnuts, Pete says he's never tried them before. We'll take them home to roast.

We reach St Ann's Well, now home to a café if you're peckish.

The spring or well is named after Saint Anne, the maternal grandmother of Christ and the patron saint of many wells. A building that dates back to 1813 houses the well or spring. Malvern water flows freely from an elaborately carved water spout. During the early 20th century, the now-defunct Burrows company bottled and sold Malvern Water from this source under the "St Ann's Well" brand.

St Werstan

According to James Nott one of the most important events in the history of Malvern was the arrival of St. Werstan, who established a cell on the hillside near St. Ann's Well. St. Werstan was a monk of the Saxon monastery of Deerhurst in Gloucestershire which was destroyed by Vikings. Werstan escaped and fled through the Malvern Chase, finding sanctuary on the Malvern Hills. Legend tells that the settlement in Great Malvern began following the murder of St. Werstan. Although the legend may be monastic mythology, historians have concluded that he was the original martyr. St Werstan's oratory is thought to have been located on the site of St Michael's Chapel which is believed to have stood on the site of Bello Sguardo, a Victorian villa. Bello Sguardo was built on the site of Hermitage Cottage. The cottage was demolished in 1825 and ecclesiastical carvings were found within it. A Mediaeval undercroft, human bones and parts of a coffin were also uncovered. A 15th-century stained-glass window in Great Malvern Priory depicts the story of St. Werstan, with details of his vision, the consecration of his chapel, Edward the Confessor granting the charter for the site, and Werstan's martyrdom.

St Ann's Well Spout

Healing waters

The quality of Malvern spring water was appreciated in the medieval period. The purity of St Ann's Well in particular was well known in the 15th century as a curative for the "many maladies suffered by mediaeval folk". An old song attributed to the Rev. Edmund Rea, who became Vicar of Great Malvern in 1612, alludes to the healing properties of the well:

Out of thy famous Hille

There daily springeth

A water passing still

That always bringeth

Great comfort to alle them

That are diseased men

And makes them well again

So Prayse the Lord!

In the 19th century Water Cure patients were woken at 5am,wrapped in wet sheets and given cold showers before being sent up the hills for exercise and to drink water at St Ann's Well. All this was done before breakfast!

We left St Ann's Well behind and took a steep climb up a path leading us to Worcestershire Beacon.

It was a hard going up, certainly got the heart pumping.

Looking back across to North Hill

After a long steep climb we make it to the top of Worcestershire Beacon summit at 425 metres (1,394 ft).

It is the highest point of the range of Malvern Hills that runs about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) north-south along the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border, although Worcestershire Beacon itself lies entirely within Worcestershire.

The name Beacon comes from the use of the hill as a signalling beacon. Lord Macaulay included the Beacon in his poem Armada, which describes the chain of warning fires which were lit when the Spanish Armada attempted to invade England in 1588:

And on, and on, without a pause, untired they bounded still

All night from tower to tower they sprang; they sprang from hill to hill

Till the proud Peak unfurled the flag o’er Darwin’s rocky dales

Till like volcanoes flared to heaven the stormy hills of Wales,

Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern’s lonely height,

Till streamed in crimson on the wind the Wrekin’s crest of light.

The steep eastern flank of the hill begins immediately behind Bellevue Terrace, one of the two main shopping streets in the town centre of Great Malvern from where its summit is a brisk 35 – 40 minutes steep walk via St Ann's Well or Happy Valley. It can also be accessed by a short, steep, un pathed climb from Jubilee Drive on the western side, or reached by a more leisurely stroll along the crest of the ridge from a car park near the Wyche Cutting, a mile or so to the south of the town centre.

The Beacon affords an extensive panoramic view that includes the Lickey Hills near Redditch, The Wrekin and past Birmingham to Cannock Chase, as well as much of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, the Welsh border mountains, the Shropshire Hills and across the valleys of the Severn and Avon to the Cotswold Hills. Parts of thirteen counties, the Bristol Channel, and the cathedrals of Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford can be seen.

Running due east from Worcestershire Beacon, the next highest point of land is on the western slope of the Ural Mountains.

The hills are mostly igneous and metamorphic rocks from the late pre-Cambrian, around 600 million years old and the Beacon is part of the watershed that permits the rise of the mineral springs and wells of the famous Malvern water that is bottled commercially on a large scale and sold worldwide, and they were responsible for the development of Malvern from a village to a busy spa town in the early 19th century. Hundreds of millions of years of erosion and glacial passage have given the Beacon and its neighbouring peaks their characteristic smoothly rounded features.

The Worcestershire Beacon has historically been used as a location for signalling beacons. In 1588 it formed part of a chain of warning fires which were lit when the Spanish Armada attempted to invade England. Beacon fires were also lit to celebrate national occasions including the end of the Crimean War (1856), the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales (1863), the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria (1887) and Diamond Jubilee (1897) the coronation of George V (1911) and the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (1953). In recent years it has been used as a beacon for special occasions such as the millennium night of 31 December 1999 when a large fire was lit as part of a nationwide network of hill top beacons to celebrate the event. A beacon fire was also lit on the Worcestershire Beacon on 3 June 2002 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II and on 4 June 2012 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

On the summit is a viewfinder or toposcope, identifying the hills to be seen on a clear day; it was designed by Malvern architect Arthur Troyte Griffith, a friend of Sir Edward Elgar and erected in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. It was stolen in 2000 and replaced by Malvern Hills Conservators the same year. The original was returned to the Conservators in 2001.

During World War II the Beacon was used as a fire lookout point for air raids on Birmingham and Coventry, and in the latter half of the 20th century it was used regularly as a location for a BBC transmitter relay van for covering horse racing and sports events in Worcester.

The Beacons Trigpoint.

We made our way from the Beacon onto Summer Hill.

Now all that was left was the path down off the hills.

We walked back down to the van after a shade over 7 miles with 514 metres (1686.35ft) of ascent.

That's almost half the height of Snowdon that stands at 1085M (3560ft) to put that into contrast.

Back at the van, we pull off our boots and brew up a cup of tea before driving onto Ross On Wye in Herefordshire.

We arrive in Ross On Wye and park up on Wye Street, where there is free parking all day Sunday and free 4 hours on other days with no return for 4 hours between 9am and 6pm. With this in mind we had free parking until 1pm on Monday. So this is where we intend to sleep the night in the van next to the River Wye. Added bonus was a toilet block open at all times for 20p usage.

We leave the van and walk up into town for a look about, dinner and beers.

The name "Ross" is derived from the Welsh or Celtic for 'a promontory'. It was renamed "Ross-on-Wye" in 1931 by the General Post Office, due to confusion with other places of the same or similar name.

Ross-on-Wye promotes itself as "the birthplace of British tourism". In 1745, the rector, Dr John Egerton, started taking friends on boat trips down the valley from his rectory at Ross. The Wye Valley's attraction was its river scenery, its precipitous landscapes, and its castles and abbeys, which were accessible to seekers of the "Picturesque". In 1782, William Gilpin's book "Observations on the River Wye" was published, the first illustrated tour guide to be published in Britain. Once it was published, demand grew so much that by 1808 there were eight boats making regular excursions down the Wye, most of them hired from inns in Ross and Monmouth. By 1850 more than 20 visitors had published their own accounts of the Wye Tour, and the area was established as a tourist area.

On the corner we can see the Mock Gothic Town walls built in 1833 during the construction of Wilton Road.

Dating from the 17th Century the Inn is named after John Kyrle "The Man of Ross" who spent much of his time and wealth improving the welfare of Ross and its people. His portrait and inscription describing his life and times can be found outside above the bar window.

Site of The Swan And Falcon Inn. The "Swan" was originally located on the High Street and was called the "Swan and Falcon". The original site was abandoned because, presumably, it was deemed too small by the 1800's so they moved around the corner. James Barrett was the landlord of the Swan Hotel in 1837 and this was when he opened the Royal Hotel up in the Palace Pound on the site of the Bishops Palace.

These Assembly rooms were visited by Horatio Nelson in 1802 and by John Byng (Viscount Torrington) an artist in 1787.

A look up St Marys Street to St Marys Church

The church of St Mary the Virgin stands on one of the highest points in the town and the spire can be seen for many miles around; it is one of the largest churches in Herefordshire.

It has been the centre of Christian worship in the town for over 700 years and is central to a large group of parishes in the area. It was originally founded by Robert de Betun, Bishop of Hereford, in the 13th century. The church, in its current form, was dedicated in 1316. There is evidence that suggests that there was a Saxon and Norman church there before the current one was built.

In the churchyard is the Plague Cross that was erected to mark the graves where the three hundred or so townsfolk who were buried by night and without coffins during a savage outbreak of the plague in 1637.

We walk on down the High Street and up to the Market House.

The right to hold a market in Ross was granted in the 12th century by King Stephen. This stimulated the economy and encouraged trade with the surrounding countryside. There are records that indicate that Ross supported a variety of tradesmen, shops, market stalls, mills and iron forges during the reign of Edward 1.

The current Market Hall was built between 1650 and 1654, replacing an older probably wooden building, and is now used as the Ross Heritage Centre. Regular markets are still held under and in front of the Market House.

The clock tower was a later addition and dates from the 18th Century although it may well have replaced an earlier structure removed due to problems sealing it with the roof.

So after a little wander about we visited the Mail Room Wetherspoon pub in the former post office for dinner and a beer. Then we moved onto the King Charles the II pub for another beer and watch the rest of the Tottenham v West Ham game.

West Ham were 3 nil down and then in the 81st minute the Hammers score, I thought no chance of a comeback with so little time left. Then they replace Antonio with Lanzini. I said to Pete "WTF are they doing? Lanzini is awful but he'll probably prove me wrong!" and blow me he did, Lanzini scored the equaliser goal in spectacular fashion in the 93rd minute!! 3-3 amazing game! We then moved onto the Eagle Public house for one more beer before going back to the van to sleep.

The next morning (Monday 19th Oct 2020) I had a short along the River Wye.

The River Wye is the fifth-longest river in the UK, stretching some 215 kilometres from its source on Plynlimon in mid Wales to the Severn estuary. For much of its length the river forms part of the border between England and Wales. The Wye Valley is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.