England’s Midlands are crisscrossed with locations associated with real people who’s life stories have mythical and legendary qualities. The stories vary from the likely but outlandish to the probably embelished. While the people range from the very ordinary, through those who were celebrities in their time, or remain seriously famous.
Here is a varied selection of walks associated with them all doable without a car.
“Twice Tried, Twice Hanged, Twice Buried”
Booth’s Farm Ruins
A walk to the ruined foundations of Booth’s Farm once home to William Booth leader of the Perry Barr Coiners. A group of early 19th Century forgers and fraudsters in the Birmingham and Black Country area a little bit like David Hartley’s Cragg Vale coiners. Read more
Caractacus’ Last Stand
Caer Caradoc
The site of Caractacus’ last stand against the Romans? Circular walk in the heart of the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty from Church Stretton up and along the backbone of the commonly managed Long Mynd plateau. Read more
Border Country
Wychbury Hill
An enigmatic, possibly sometimes errie, location righ on the boundary between the West Midlands metropolis and northern Worcestershire, the Severn and the Trent. Most infamously connected with a modern unsolved mystery and its folk memory, but a place of great significance for millennia. Read more
“The Gay Godfather of the British Left”
Grindleford – Millthorpe
Spectacular views across the central Peak District from the gritstone edge high above the Derwent Valley between Grindleford and Baslow. Read more
Ned Ludd: Origins
Leicester – Anstey
Mostly urban and suburban walk from central Leicester out to Anstey where the legendary Ned Ludd reputedly broke a spinning machine in the late 18th Century. Read more
Socialist Legends
Retrace the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass
Walk up and along the edge of Kinder Scout, the tallest summit in both the Peak District and the eastern Midlands. Famously the site of April 1932’s Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, a Communist Party led protest for land access rights. Read more
Gunpower Treason and Plot
Coughton Court
Countryside walk across western Warwickshire from Henley-in-Arden Railway Station to Coughton Court, ancient seat of the Throckmorton family, and famously connected to 1605’s Gunpower Plot and other Early Modern era intrigues. Read more
The Protective Benefits of Green Cheese
Market Harborough – Desborough
Rural walk through the gently hilly landscape of southern Leicestershire and northern Northamptonshire, between the towns of Market Harborough and Desborough, an area with a surprisingly radical and tumutlous past. Read more
Hobbiton?
Stourbridge – Kinver
Just a few miles west of Stourbridge, out in the Staffordshire countryside, is Kinver Edge. A sandstone edge, famed for its natural beauty, nature reserve, impressive views and rock houses inhabited up until the 1960s. Read more
Lord Byron’s Pad
Newstead Abbey
Gentle walk in central Nottinghamshire from Hucknall Railway Station via the village of Linby to Newstead Abbey the ancestral seat of the romantic poet Lord Byron. Read more
The CCRU Has Never Existed
Kenilworth – University of Warwick
Walk from the central Warwickshire town of Kenilworth along greenways and across fields to the University of Warwick’s modernist and post-modern campus on the edge of Coventry. Read more
My Kingdom for a Horse Part 1
The Battle of Bosworth Field
Walk across the countryside of south west Leicestershire between the town of Hinckley and the large village of Market Bosworth. The walk goes via the site of where the Battle of Bosworth Field took place in 1485, as well as taking in a small section of the Ashby Canal. Read more
My Kingdom for a Horse Part 2
South Wigston – Leicester
Walk from South Wigston on the edge of the Leicester conurbation to the heart of the urban core. Largely along the Grand Union Canal towpath and a cycle greenway. Read more
My Kingdom for a Horse Part 3
Colwall – Upton upon Severn
Rural walk from Colwall in Herefordshire, across a low point in the Malvern Hills, across Castlemorton Common, to the ancient and surprisingly lively River Severn side town of Upton-upon-Severn. The place where Charles Stuart’s dreams of regaining the throne in 1651 began to unravel. Read more
My Kingdom for a Horse Part 4
Boscobel House
Walk predominetly along quiet lanes across the rolling countryside of the Shropshire – Staffordshire borderlands to Boscobel House. This is where the future Charles II hid in the days after the Battle of Worcester in 1651, including for a time in an oak tree. Descendents of this tree still stand. Read more
“What we’re dealing with here is a total lack of respect for the law”
Castlemorton Common
Predominantly rural walk from Great Malvern to Colwall via Castlemorton Common. An unusually large surviving fragement of common land in the shadow of the Malvern Hills which hosted Britian’s largest ever free party between 22nd and 29th May 1992. Read more
Luddite Uprising
Ambergate – Alfreton
Predominantly countryide walk east from Ambergate Railway Station, to Alfreton. Taking in parts of the course of the former Cromford Canal and the village of Pentrich. Pentrich was where the doomed Pentrich Revolution of June 1817 began. Read more
Mid-Warwickshire’s Moated Grange
Baddesley Clinton
Walk from Dorridge Railway Station to the 16th Century moated manor house Baddesley Clinton. Baddesley Clinton has a colourful history associated with upper crust Warwickshire’s 16th and 17th Century history of recusancy and resistance to the post-Reformation Church of England. Walk is primarily across countryside and ends at Lapworth Railway Station. Read more
