Back to Bredon Hill

From Seasons

I walk quite often with the Harvington Walking group and as luck would have it today's walk was around Bredon Hill, just two days since a New Year walk, also on Bredon Hill. However, this time our start point was on the other side of the hill. We had agreed with Beckford Silk that we could park in their cark park while we walked and that we would eat at Two Jay's Café at the end of the walk.

View Bredon Hill from Beckford 2013-01 in a larger map

We started walking at around 9:30 and at the point at which we should have left the road we were faced with a recently ploughed field that had been turned into a quagmire by the recent rain. This straight segment was only about a third of a mile so we just walked a little further along the road and covered two sides of a triangle rather than one to get to the same point. We had only walked about halfway up the hill when we stopped for coffee some seasonal remnants, i.e. some mince pies and/or stollen. We then continued up the hill to a derelict barn at Shalden Farm, the highest point (~225m) of this walk before heading back down in the direction of the village of Conderton.

Just north of Conderton we turned east back towards Beckford, the lower slopes that we were traversing became very wet, muddy and slippery though, unlike the walk two days earlier, no one fell. Along the route we called in at the Beckford Parish Church of St John the Baptist for a quick look see. I have rung the bells here on occasion so am reasonably familiar with the church but the early Norman architecture was of great interested to a couple of our party. From the church it was but a short walk along Ashton Road to our start point.

After getting out of dirty walking gear we visited Two Jay's Café for lunch. The lady working the café managed to take the order, prepare and serve the food and drinks, clear up and take payment all on her lonesome. It did take a while but we were not in a great hurry. The food was reasonably priced and good value for money. The ladies among us could resist the opportunity afforded by the silk works and shop.

The walk was only a little over 5½miles but with the wet conditions did slow us down.