Distance: 9.1 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Walk from Craven Arms Railway Station through the hilly south Shropshire countryside to Bishop’s Castle, a very remote, but lively and bustling historic market town.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Mini Municipalty
Like its near neighbour Montgomery on the far side of the Welsh border, Bishop’s Castle in westernmost Shropshire is a town which is really the size of a large village, yet if anything, feels like a settlement which is far bigger.
In common with many other rural settlements which call themselves towns, especially in the area still called the Welsh Marches, Bishop’s Castle traces its origins back to the High Middle Ages. A castle having been constructed at Bishop’s Castle in 1087 by the Bishop of Hereford, hence the name. The Bishops of Hereford had gained the land where the town now lands during the early Middle Ages when it was granted to them by a man called Edwin Shakehead who had been cured of a palsy after a pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. Ethelbert which stood in Hereford Cathedral.
The castle and the settlement which grew up around it, in a manner akin to Montgomery, or Henley-in-Arden far to the east in Warwickshire, which developed around Beaudesert Castle during the same time period, was periodically buffeted by the tumultuous politics of a medieval Welsh Marches. Though in the case of Bishop’s Castle there does appear to have been a church and a few dwellings on the site prior to the construction of a mote and bailey at the site. The town was sometimes attacked by Welsh raiders, but also subject to disputes and internal strife between the interests of different march lords. Most spectacularly in Bishops Castle’s case in 1263 when the castle was besieged by the Earl of Arundel who was in dispute with the Bishop of Hereford. This caused significant damage to both the castle and town.
Prior to the settlement of the Anglo-Welsh boundary along more or less modern lines in 1536 parts of Bishops Castle were in Wales. The incorporation of Wales into the same polity as England that year ended Bishop Castle’s status as part of the Welsh Marches as anything other than a cultural region. Though the castle itself initially continued to be maintained with it remaining intact in 1557. By 1618 however, it had fallen into disrepair to such an extent that it was beginning into slide into decay. In the 18th Century much of what remained was demolished meaning that few clear cases of the fortress remain today. Houses and a bowling green were constructed on much of the site where the castle stood. The Castle Hotel on the northern edge of Bishop’s Castle town centre is thought to stand where the castle’s keep was once sited. Construction of it began
Despite the area where Bishops Castle stands in the northern part of the Forest of Clun being incredibly rural and quite isolated, Bishops Castle retained its own district level council into the 1960s when it was abolished as part of local government rationalisation. The town’s small, but elegant, and quite prominent town hall is a reminder of this era. During an earlier era it has been a notorious “rotten borough”, having been granted parliamentary representation in 1585 and retained it, despite many other settlements and parts of the county having far larger numbers of voters even on the highly restricted basis that allowed only pretty wealthy people to vote. This status was abolished in 1832 when the first Reform Act aimed at putting parliamentary representation on a more equal basis and moderately increasing the proportion of men in the UK allowed to vote was passed.
Less weightily, Bishop’s Castle is home to the Three Tuns Brewery established in 1642. This is thought to be the oldest continually operating licensed brewery in the country. These days it still operates in premises constructed well over a century ago during the Victorian era. Making the site akin to a miniature version of the Hook Norton Brewery, famed for its tower, which stands on Oxfordshire’s northern Cotswolds fringe a little way from the county boundary with Warwickshire.
Today Bishop’s Castle is home to just under 2,000 people. The town was bypassed in the 19th Century by Thomas Telford which has contributed to it maintaining its tightly packed urban plan, one where the original medieval street pattern is still apparent. Weekly market and annual fair charters granted in 1249 during the great High Medieval boom in town establishment continue to be in effect to this day. Given its location near several long distance footpaths including the Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail it is no surprise that like many of its peers elsewhere in the Welsh Marches Bishop’s Castle is a Walkers are Welcome Town.
The Walk
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 Craven Arms to Bishop’s Castle begins from Craven Arms Railway Station.
Having alighted at Craven Arms exit the station on the town side.
Walk straight ahead down a driveway leading from the station to the A449 which forms Craven Arms’ high street.
Upon reaching the main road turn right and walk along the A449 into the town centre.
Soon you pass a cluster of shops including a petrol station with a Gregg’s and Tuffins Supermarket and Garden Centre and approach the large derelict Craven Arms pub.
Here turn right and walk beneath the railway line heading west through Craven Arms’ suburbs.
On the edge of the town turn right into a field and continue heading right walking through a housing estate.
Having passed through the housing estate you cross pasture land approaching a road.
On the far side of the road you pick up the well worn Shropshire Way heading west across the fields towards Sibdon Carwood.
Pass Sibdon Castle and cross parkland heading for a small cottage at the base of the ridge, on the other side of which lies Hopesay.
Clamber of a stile beside the cottage and head uphill towards Oldfield Wood near the summit of the hill.
On the edge of the trees you climb a stile and then on the far side follow the tree line around towards the hill’s summit. The track widens and becomes less indistinct as you walk.
The trees open out when you reach the crest of the ridge high above Hopesay.
Here turn right and pick up an indistinct path running to the right and downhill.
Continue down the steep hillside through the undergrowth following the indistinct path downhill.
At the bottom of the slope you cross a stile and head to the left down towards a stile. Once on the far side of the stile turn right and follow a driveway towards and around a cottage heading for the main road through Hopesay.
Turn right upon reaching the road and head uphill.
Soon you reach a t-junction where you turn left and head down through the hamlet of Round Oak.
Follow the road for quite some distance. When I walked the route late morning on a Friday it was very quiet, but take care as you walk in case of cars.
Having descended the steep Basford Bank you pass the edge of the small village of Edgton.
Beyond Edgton you approach a junction beside the main road at Red House Farm. Avoiding the main road you turn right and then head uphill past Five Turnings Cottage heading to the left.
Continue walking through remote countryside across Oakley Mynd following the road to the west. There are spectacular views to the right as you walk north towards Long Mynd and the heart of the Shropshire Hills National Landscape.
Presently you glimpse Bishop’s Castle beneath you and begin heading downhill.
You pick up a busier road with a pavement nearing the edge of the town passing Bishop’s Castle rugby club.
On the edge of Bishop’s Castle you cross the A488, the town’s early 19th Century vintage A-road.
Soon you reach Bishop’s Castle high street where you turn right and walk uphill through the centre of the town until you reach the historic town hall and the rest of the grand old upper town where the eponymous castle once stood.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
At the time of writing in December 2025 Bishop’s Castle was served by five buses a day on weekdays and four buses a day on Saturday to Shrewsbury. There was no Sunday service. The final bus of the day departed at 15:30 and 15:40 on Saturdays and weekdays respectively. From Shrewsbury there are buses to destinations across Shropshire, and railway services south towards Hereford and South Wales, north towards North towards North Wales, Manchester and Crewe, as well as west towards Telford and the West Midlands conurbation.