A walk between train stations that offers hilltop views and history. If you want to make it more challenging, put a child on your back
At the weekend, Stace, Molly and I headed over to the Malverns for a day out. We took a very short train journey from our hometown of Ledbury to Colwall railway station, then walked across the hills to Great Malvern railway station before getting a another train back home later on.
Molly, who turns two in June, spent most of the walk on my back in the carrier. She seemed perfectly comfortable with the arrangement. I was slightly less comfortable once the hills started. My knees are both 45 years old and are starting to find this sort of thing quite painful at times.
The most direct walk begins on the opposite side of the railway line in Colwall and turns into footpaths through fields and quiet lanes. It was a mercifully mild spring day, but everything looked properly green and beautiful again after a wet and miserable winter.
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| The Malverns from Colwall railway bridge |
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| Beautiful views from a footpath in Colwall |
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| Making our way to Malvern from Colwall |
Early on we passed a pretty strange looking sheep. It had a long tail and somehow looked less like a sheep and more like the result of a sinister attempt to combine a dog and a sheep into one animal. My wife grew up on farms and told me that sheep do actually have relatively long tails, but they get docked because the poo and wool combination can lead to some nasty infections. Further reading on Reddit suggested that sheep were engineered to have long tails because the farmers like to eat them. A lovely topic of conversation.
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| The Colwall Dogsheep |
As we climbed towards Wyche Cutting we started coming across displays from the Malvern Well Dressing Festival. This year the theme is birds, and there were decorated wells dotted around the area. The tradition started in 1615 when there was a drought, but the springs in the Malverns kept flowing and supplied water to local people. The wells were decorated in thanks, and this quintessentially English practice has carried on ever since.
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| Kingfisher well-dressing, Colwall |
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| Our route |
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| More bird themed well-dressing in Colwall |
From the Wyche we headed up to Worcestershire Beacon, which really busy with other walkers. I think I gave some sort of boost to some of the people struggling to walk up the hill, because they looked at me carrying a kid on my back and probably thought “it could be worse”.
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| Looking south from the Worcestershire Beacon |
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| I'm getting too old for this sort of thing |
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| A busy Worcestershire Beacon |
The views from the Malverns are brilliant and being from the area, I have been up on these hills many times. I’m looking forward to the days when my daughter Molly can properly walk herself up them. From the Beacon, we dropped down towards St Ann’s Well, where unsurprisingly there was more well dressing to look at. Then onto the winding path towards Great Malvern.
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| St Ann's Well spring |
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| St Ann's Well, Malvern |
When we arrived in the town, we passed The Unicorn Inn, which unfortunately is temporarily closed. Shame really, because outside was an excellent sign. One arrow pointed uphill saying:
“Massive fxcking hill”
and another pointed into the pub saying:
“Nice pint”
We’d already done the massive hill and it was definitely time for a nice pint. We’d have to find somewhere that was open.
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| The Unicorn, Great Malvern |
We stopped for food and a drink at ASK Italian, where we received some excellent service and the hearty meals that we needed. Afterwards we wandered through more of the festival near Belle Vue Island, where the Well Dressing Award Ceremony was taking place beside the lovely Malvhina Fountain.
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| An owl over the Malvhina spring |
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| Malvhina |
We finished the afternoon with some duck feeding in Priory Park and another drink at Weavers of Malvern before heading downhill to the station for the train home.
It worked out at about four miles in total. Not huge, but definitely enough when you’ve got a toddler strapped to your back most of the day. Tiring in places, but properly enjoyable as well.
And thankfully Molly still seemed happy at the end of it, which usually feels like the main measure of success these days.
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| Molly |
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