Distance: 12.3 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Walk from Ashchurch near Tewkesbury up and over Bredon Hill, a dramatic outlying northwestern limb of the Cotswolds in southern Worcestershire, to the historic town of Pershore on the River Avon plain.
The Story
Route Notes
Getting Back
A Far Flung Limb of the Cotswolds
Perhaps due to their proximity to the chocolate boxy Cotswolds, which are whatever the opposite of an underappreciated landscape are, while also being comparatively distant from the West Midlands conurbation, and major national transport routes, Pershore is a town which is often overlooked.
This is a shame, because as the Council for British Archaeology noted as long ago as 1964, Pershore is one of Britain’s “gem towns”. Around a generation later in his BBC2 programme about Worcestershire, in whose southeastern quadrant Pershore lies, Jonathan Meades rightly observed that the town has a Georgian centre as well preserved, and arguably as important as Bath. Bewdley and Stourport-on-Severn in northwestern Worcestershire are of a similar vintage and level of preservation.
Like those two towns in the north of the county, Pershore was once a significant river port. A reminder that once major rivers like the Severn, and the Avon which flows around the eastern and southern edges of Pershore, part of the reason for the town’s strikingly elongated shape, were once major trading arteries.
As well as the river trade and agriculture, prior to dissolution in the late 1530s, Pershore was a key monastic centre. Today lands which once formed Pershore Abbey’s enclosure are a large park just outside the town centre. Though on the townward side Pershore Abbey’s former church, Holy Cross, remains to this day, unusually tall and truncated looking, as Pershore’s Anglican parish church. Like the Abbey in nearby Tewkesbury at the Reformation when the monastic establishment was closed Pershore’s townspeople took on the monk’s old church as their own place of worship rather than it being demolished.
Pershore sits in the shadow of Bredon Hill which rises four miles to the south. As hills go, especially in Worcestershire, home to the Mavlvern ridge which rises to 425 metres above sea level, Bredon Hill is not especially tall. It stands 299 metres above sea level. However, its degree of prominence is very significant, there being few points taller in south west Worcestershire, ensuring that Bredon Hill is visible from as far afield as a the Midlands Watershed ridge as the Lickey and Waseley Hills on Birmingham’s southern boundary with Worcestershire.
In contrast to the Lickey and Waseley Hills, which sit on the edge of a mighty conurbation, and are given over to a mixture of peri urban land uses (golf courses, suburban housing estates, country parks). Bredon Hill is part pastoral, part wild, and feels very separate from the towns and villages like Pershore that fringe it.
Bredon Hill comprises the same limestone rocks as the Cotswolds, the most famous of southern English, and southern Midlands, upland areas. For this reason it has been incorporated into the National Landscape area of outstanding natural beauty that designates the Cotswolds a protected area for reasons of cultural and natural significance.
The top of Bredon Hill is akin to a plateau, while lIke the Cotswolds as a whole its edge comprises a sharp escarpment, a dramatic rampart falling away to the River Severn plain. The southern edge is less dramatic, some parts even being farmed for cereals, but it is still quite steep, and rises up strikingly from the Gloucestershire flatlands.
Right on top of Bredon Hill stand several interesting historic remnants. Chief amongst them are the remains of an Iron Age hillfort right at the highest point on the hill, looking down the steep slope towards the River Avon and central Worcestershire. Further down the slopes from the summit stand the site of a medieval castle, once owned by the Earls of Warwick, which guarded the River Avon valley.
A bizarre much later addition to the hillfort site is a little concrete structure which looks like a water tower or perhaps a remnant of the mid-20th Century British warfare state. The structure is in fact far, far older than that. It is the remains of an 18th Century folly known as Parson’s Folly. Rather than having been erected by a churchman, the tower was built on the instructions of John Parsons, at the time the area’s MP and a gentleman holding land in the nearby village of Kemerton.
The hill’s beguiling quality and distinctive profile have long made it a gathering place. From Worcestershire’s “Clubmen” during the 17th Century Civil War, who assembled there to declare for Parliament. To the folky country fair which was held right on the summit annually on Whitsun up until 1876. A place of safety too, Worcestershire County Council’s archeologist having announced in 2011 that the county’s most spectacular ever horde of Roman treasure, comprising 4,000 artifacts, including coins minted under 16 different emperors, had been discovered there.
Route Notes
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.
This walk from Ashchurch to Pershore, up and over Bredon Hill, and down to the River Avon, via little Cotswolds style villages, begins from Ashchurch (for Tewkesbury) Railway Station.
Exit the station and across the forecourt picking up a snicket which leads out onto the A46.
Soon you pick up a path to the left which runs across fields, through a churchyard, and across a single track railway line to reach a country lane.
Follow the lane, which was dangerously busy with numerous tight bends cars sped around, when I walked the route on a Saturday in February, until you reach the village of Aston-on-Carrant. As you walk the southern slope of Bredon Hill looms in front of you.
Partway down Aston-on-Carrant’s main road you turn left down a snicket. Follow it out into the fields where you reach the Carrant Brook which you cross. This is the boundary between Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, so therefore between England’s South West and the Midlands.
Now in Worcestershire, walk straight ahead across the fields heading steadily towards Bredon Hill.
At the base of the hill you walk through the Cotswolds looking village of Kemberton, which retains numerous old looking orchards and commons.
On the northern edge of the village you ascend a bridleway starting to climb Bredon Hill.
You follow the bridleway steadily ascending, gaining impressive views across the part pastoral, part wild, and semi-rewilded landscape of the hill to the lower lands where the Avon and Severn flow below.
At the top of the hill you reach some woodland where you head to the right following the path along the edge of the steep escarpment.
Soon you approach the place where the trees end. Here you pick up the Wychavon Way, a trail around Worcestershire’s likely soon to be abolished southeastern district.
Here you can follow the footpath out onto the open hillside and up to the summit of the hill where the Banbury Stone, Iron Age hillfort remains and Parsons Folly (now bedecked with mobile phone masts) stands.
Having visited the summit of Bredon Hill, follow the Wychavon Way back down until you reach the place where the path begins to descend down the steep northern face of the hill.
Follow the path downhill, initially across grass, then down a farm track, before heading back onto a footpath across fields.
Right at the bottom of Bredon Hill you ascend a short slope, essentially a sibling peak to Bredon Hill, up to the village of Great Comberton, which has a similar Cotswolds feel to Kemberton.
Head through the village, partly on roads, partly on a footpath through the churchyard.
Near the top of the village you turn left onto a track running down to the River Avon. There are impressive views from beside the river back towards Bredon Hill’s steep northern face. Once on the river bank you turn right, and walk beside the river for some distance.
Soon off to the right you pick up Shakespeare’s Avon Way towards Pershore’s southern edge.
Crossing the fields there are spectacular views back towards Bredon Hill.
Presently you pick up a road through the hamlet of Pensham Hill Cottages, towards the busy B4084.
Upon reaching the B4084 you turn left to reach the bridges into Pershore across the River Avon.
Once over the river you soon reach the town centre which is situated close to the river.
It is worth taking some time to look at the well ;preserved 18th and 19th Century, and the yellow Cotswolds stone abbey, part of which are around 1,000 years old, which is an unusual truncated looking structure that was once part of a monastery. Having survived the Reformation like nearby Tewkesbury Abbey due to having been taken on by the townspeople in the 1530s.
To reach Pershore Railway Station on the Cotswolds Line, keep on walking straight up Pershore high street until you reach the A4104 the turn left.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
Pershore (at the time of writing in February 2025) is served by hourly trains throughout the day west towards Hereford, Great Malvern, Worcester and Worcestershire Parkway, where there are trains towards the West Midlands and southwest. As well as east towards Evesham, Morton-in-Marsh, Oxford, and ultimately London. There were also a range of bus services, many infrequent and not every day, mostly serving routes to Evesham or Worcester.