Mud, mud, glorious mud!

If I am going to manage this challenge, pootling round my local footpaths is not going to be enough preparation, so I need to do some longer and more strenuous walks. My walking buddy, Gill, is incapacitated at the moment following a foot operation so I signed up for a Sunday walk “Secrets of the Stiperstones”, with the Shropshire 1000 milers, a local walking group I occasionally walk with. I have walked up and over the Stiperstones many times but this sounded like a different route to one I had done before (and indeed it was). It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Waking up to drizzly rain and a forecast of more to come, I wasn’t sure that it was such a good plan after all, when I could be curled up in my dressing gown, drinking coffee and listening to the “Archers Omnibus” instead.

But I knew I would regret it if I didn’t go, so suitably dressed I made my way to the Snailbeach Village Hall car park to meet my companions for the day.

Walking is always more fun with other people and this was a jolly group fuelled by the most enormous bar of Cadbury’s chocolate I have ever seen. 

There was mud EVERYWHERE and some paths were so waterlogged they were hatching frogspawn. But once we got up onto the higher path and the Stiperstones themselves the ground was drier - but rockier of course!

We found a little place sheltered from the wind to have lunch (and large amounts of chocolate) and then the steep decline back to the car park, walking through the remains of Snailbeach mines along the way. It was a satisfying way to spend a Sunday after all.