Great Malvern Trip early September - 3 nights/4 walks

Stay in Great Malvern or in surrounding villages if you have a car, or along the train line (Malvern Link, Worcester) if you can make the train journeys work).

Order of Walks – Arrivals and Departure Day: starting and fionishing the trip in Malvern means anyone staying there can drop off/pick up their luggage from the train/en route to the train. The buses useful for shortcuts in the longest walk (Pershore) are only running Mon-Sat, so it’s the Saturday walk. Which leaves Hagley - Barnt Green for Sunday.

 

Draft Schedule based on current train and bus timings:

Friday 05^th September:  SWC 324 The Malvern Hills from Great Malvern

20.6 km (12.8 mi), with 1078m ascent/descent, 8/10. Pub lunch. Longer and shorter options.

Route over the iconic Malverns Range, rising out of the Plain, with optional routes covering all but a few of the tops. The route rises through the town past all important landmarks and ascends the famous 99 Steps to St. Ann’s Well, but then heads southerly, mostly through ancient woodlands along the foot of the hills, to lunch. It then rises up through the mid slopes of scrub, grass, rock and bracken, first to the Herefordshire Beacon and then returns along the top of the ridge via the Worcestershire Beacon to Great Malvern.

Plenty of options to shorten, plus one extension to the northerly tops.

 

Saturday 06^th September:  SWC 323 in Reverse! Pershore to Evesham via Bredon and Dumbleton Hills

34.3 km (21.3 mi), with 532/529m ascent/descent, 8/10. Much shorter options.

08.50 train from Great Malvern (via Malvern Link and Worcester). Returns: hourly. Pub lunch.

Through the Vale of Evesham and over Cotswold Outliers with grand views of the Cotswolds and Malvern Hills. Walking this in reverse makes more sense for shortcuts (walked and by bus), as the more frequent buses are at the Evesham end (from Elmley Castle or Ashton under Hill, the lunch stops, or further along from Hinton on the Green or Sedgeberrow).

 

Sunday 07^th September:  SWC 161 Hagley to Barnt Green via the Clent Hills

18.5 km (11.5 mi), with 500m ascent/descent, 6/10. Longer and shorter options.

08.58 train from Great Malvern (calls Malvern Link), then change at Worcester Foregate Street. Returns: hourly, change at Bromsgrove (then calls Worcester Foregate Street and Malvern Link). The outbound journey is just short of an hour each, the return a little longer (buy a Birmingham All Stations Return). Pub lunch on the circular walk, picnic lunch on the linear one.

The North Worcestershire Hills. This looks a promising, mildly hilly route with a shorter circular version and an optional extension near the start, so perfect for a group outing. The walk was put onto the site more than 10 years ago and (presumably) hasn’t been walked since by anyone including the walk author, but I will go out in the next months, check out route and directions and update them accordingly.

 

Monday 08^th September:  SWC 324A The Malvern Hills from Colwall (to Great Malvern)

From 18.8 km (11.7 mi) with 820/865m ascent/descent, 7/10. Longer and shorter options.

09.05 train from Great Malvern (earlier from Malvern Link or Worcester). Pub lunch.

Starting from Colwall, you approach the Malvern range ‘from the back’ and conquer the southerly tops first that the main walk doesn’t reach (optional extension to the furthest of them), before turning north across the central bit of the range already walked on Friday. Between these two routes (and their short extensions) you cover 18 of the 22 different tops!

 

Note: due to the outbound journey being on a weekday morning, Advance tickets will likely be the cheapest option. I will produce detailed walk posts as soon as those tickets are available and put a note up accordingly.