Author | Writer | Photographer
Last night’s Countryfile programme was from Shropshire – in fact, it was from just the other side of the Long Mynd, here in Church Stretton.
I’d already climbed Ragleth Hill earlier in the morning, appreciating the sunshine we hadn’t seen for a few days. Walking to the end of the hill, where the telegraph pole crowns the southern tip, I took a photo of All Stretton and the Long Mynd under a blue sky with some cloud.
The June issue of BBC Countryfile explores Britain’s coastline, and my 3-mile walk around Dinas Head kicks off this month’s Great Days Out section. (Don’t forget – always abide by …
Check out the October issue of BBC Countryfile magazine for my Welsh Border Seven Castle Challenge.
This month’s theme is castles, and sitting on the border with the country with more castles per square mile than any other country in the world, I had to have a go at getting as many castles as I could into one article. In fact, I could have got many more, but these are the ones that I suggested you could visit in one day (although the magazine has suggested you may wish to make a weekend of it).
BBC Countryfile magazine’s Great Days Out section, in the February 2019 issue, looks at Lost Worlds, and I’ve got a piece in there highlighting the varied lost worlds of Shropshire.
Limited space meant that I wasn’t able to include any detailed walking routes, but if you’d like to explore the areas I mention in more detail, check out the following links below:
Check out the April issue of BBC Countryfile magazine for my Firth of Flowers piece in their Great Days Out section.
Fancy sleeping where your favourite writer lived, worked or holidayed? Simon Whaley suggests six of the UK’s best literary stays.
STRICTLY COME LEKKING
Witness early morning dance contestants compete for the avian equivalent of the Glitter Ball Trophy in the black grouse lek, says Simon Whaley.
Follow in the footsteps of the mysterious Black Vaughan, a shape-shifting spectre who may have inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, says Simon Whaley…
As flowers blossom along the route, take a drive through black-and0white clad villages in a tour of architectural history, with Simon Whaley.
The heart of an oak tree is almost as hard as iron, making it the ideal house-building material. Herefordshire’s 40-mile Black and White Trail is the perfect opportunity to see a forest of these traditional timber-framed buildings, and with daffodils, flowering magnolias and the first sight of the county’s blossoming orchards, this Black and White Trail is anything but monochrome.
Timber-framed buildings are constructed in a way that if you could pick them up and turn them upside down they would remain intact. At the tour’s start in Leominster, the intricately-carved timber Grade II listed Grange Court may not have been picked up like this, but it was moved from its town centre location and, in 1859, rebuilt beside the Priory Church.
