Distance: 11 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the gpx. file from Dropbox

Walk from Bewdley in north Worcestershire to Great Witley over the Abberley Hills, following the route of the Worcestershire Way.

The Story

Route Notes

Getting Back

Abberley’s Tree Clad Ridge

Rising to their 283 metre tall summit the Abberley Hills only four or five miles from the River Severn are an imposing feature of the north Worcestershire landscape. However, they are significantly less famous than the Malverns, probably because they are some distance from a settlement of any size and despite a couple of A-roads running nearby are relatively tricky to get to. Especially by public transport as the villages of Great Witley and Abberley to the south and west of the hills nested at their base are only visited by buses half a dozen times a day.

The Abberley Hills are made from Silurian rocks formed over 400 million years ago. This was a relatively short lived geological era – only around 30 million years… However, it is rocks from this era that make the landscapes of the western Midlands and parts of Wales distinctive. The geological event that forced the rocks comprising the Abberley Hills up out of the earth’s crust occurred slightly more recently, around 360 to 250 million years ago.

This rock was quarried at the eastern end of the hills until fairly recently, the quarry now standing derelict, the rock face blasted and chibbled at by the quarry workers stark and exposed. The rest of the top of Abberley Hill is predominantly wooded. Trees extend right to the summit of the narrow ridge that runs along the hill’s highest point. There is a break in the trees to the western end of the ridge, near the tallest point beside an old Ordnance Survey trig point, and from here there are spectacular views on a clear day to the south as far as far as the north eastern face of the Black Mountains just south of Hay-on-Wye in the far distance.

The Abberley Hill’s distinctiveness is recognised in the Abberley and Malvern Hills Geopark formed in 2003 which encompassed both sets of hills and other interesting geological features of the landscapes around them. The geopark is traversed by the Geopark Way which runs for 103 miles from Bridgnorth down to Gloucester. The Abberley Hills are encountered in the walk’s middle section.

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 Bewdley in north Worcestershire to Great Witley over the Abberley Hills begins from Bewdley town centre.

It follows the Worcestershire Way.

From the bus stops on Bewdley town centre head to the River Severn and turn right, picking up the Worcestershire Way.

On the edge of Bewdley’s Georgian town centre turn right and make your way along a series of back roads until you reach a footpath running off into woodland.

Follow this footpath for some distance through the trees.

Leaving the woodland you follow a farm track downhill beneath the A456 to reach the small village of Ribbesford.

In the centre of the village turn right heading into the graveyard around the village’s red sandstone church, and following the footpath uphill.

Walk for some distance along a network of footpaths and lanes overhung with trees heading steadily southwards.

You cross a campsite and a golf course, getting your first sight of the top of the Abberley Hills. Before picking up lanes once more.

You descend a steep bank to reach the side of the Dick Brook, which you cross.

Then continue along lanes, before heading down a farm track, now paralleling Abberley.

At the bottom of the track you descend across fields to reach the side of the Dick Brook and the steep bank above it again.

At a place called Joans Hole you cross the stream again and head right, past a chalet, following the Dick Brook for a short distance.

You then follow a well worn path towards a scattering of houses at the eastern end of the Abberley Hills.

Soon you pick up a lane heading right until you reach a footpath waymark pointing right across fields, cutting the corner, and rejoining the lane beside a farm which lies right beneath the ridge.

On reaching the farm just past its western end turn left following a track up onto the side of the hill.

Partway up you glimpse the distance Clent Hills, just outside West Midlands county to the left.

Soon you reach a lane, and continue along it to the left until you reach a bridleway on the right.

Turn onto this bridleway and follow it into the woodland that caps the Abberley Hills.

You reach a place on the right where you steeply ascend through the trees to reach the crest of the ridge.

Upon reaching the top turn left and follow the path along the top of the curving ridge at the top of the hill. It is almost always thicky wooded, sometimes quite flat, other times undulating with steep ascents.

Presently you reach the summit of the Abberley Hills where there is an old Ordnance Survey trig point, from which there is a spectacular view to the south west, over the Abberley Clock Tower, on clear days as far as the north eastern end of the Black Mountains near Hay-on-Wye can be seen.

Walk past the trig point and begin to descend through the trees.

Soon you reach a lane which runs up and over the western end of the Abberley Hills.

Turn left here. When the visibility is good there are spectacular view to the south across the other west Worcestershire hills as far as Malvern.

At the bottom of the lane you reach the A443. Turn left here and walk the short distance downhill towards the village of Great Witley near the ruins of Witley Court.

Here on the A451 approaching Redmarley you find the bus stop for buses between Tenbury Wells and Worcester.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

At the time of writing in May 2026 there were two afternoon buses on weekdays and Saturdays (one leaving at 14:27 the other at 17:27) from Great Witley towards Worcester, and two going the other way to Tenbury Wells. Tenbury Wells has buses to other destinations in Worcestershire, Shropshire and Herefordshire, while Worcester is a major transport hub with trains towards Hereford via Malvern, and north and east towards the West Midlands conurbation, Oxford, Reading and London as well as south west towards Gloucester, Cheltenham and Bristol.