Wenlock Edge Shropshire

4.15pm 7 miles in 58 mins 57 seconds

Week to date mileage 7 miles

Month to date mileage 91

Average weekly rate 29.8 miles

Average monthly rate 130

Year to date 869

Lifetime 10462

If you stay at the youth hostel at Wilderhope Manor you are on the door stop of the Wenlock Edge which is a wooded escapement running 15 miles. There are well laid out walks and cycle routes along this area of beauty.

The poet AE Houseman poem on Wenlock Edge captures the wooded nature of the environment.

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

This was the site of my run today which was certainly undulating. On the section of the edge that I ran I never saw anybody else out walking. Being up high on an escapement the views were potentially very good but in the time I had for my run the woodland prevented any un-obscured view.

I had a run across a wheat field but generally the land is more suited to sheep and there were plenty of these in the surrounding fields.