Roger Butler explores a beautiful and fascinating corner of the England/Wales border, where mining history and Saxon legends mingle with new stories of landscape restoration in aid of the emperor moth
DANK MIST HUNG over the damp hillside and a line of craggy hawthorns resembled a cluster of wizened old witches. Only the guttural croak of a jet-black raven, silhouetted like a character from a Gothic novel, broke the silence but two minutes later a pale yellow disc shimmered over the skyline. Strands of weak sunshine now danced over a fiercely jagged tor and, with a cold shiver, I wondered whether the ghostly shadow of Wild Edric might be due to make a special appearance.
The spiky landscape of the Stiperstones lends itself to legends. Edric was a Saxon warrior who fought against William the Conqueror, but in spirit he still gallops across his beloved Shropshire hills, riding out whenever England is threatened with invasion. And the exposed quartzite crag known as the Devil’s Chair, left after a giant once spilled his bag of rocks, comes with plenty of tales too. When the cloud is down and the winds blow from the west, it is said the devil takes his seat on what must be a rather uncomfortable throne.
ROCKY VIEWPOINT
If the skies are clear, the magnificent panoramas stretch east to the muscular contours of the Long Mynd and west into deepest Mid Wales. And, following a major project to remove plantations of inappropriate forestry to the south of the highest tors, some of those views have been much improved in recent years. Under a banner of ‘Back to Purple’ dark conifers have been clear-felled and, in their place, swathes of heather moorland are now being successfully re-established.
There’s something special about the Stiperstones. The rocky horizon is quite different from the rest of Shropshire’s ‘blue remembered hills’ and, seen from two or three miles way, the long, bumpy ridge could easily be mistaken for the warty back of a rumbling brontosaurus. Steep, scalloped dingles have cut into the western flanks and banks of whinberry, with their juicy late-summer berries, cluster on the windswept slopes.
The quartz outcrops, which offer short but entertaining scrambles, are initially reminiscent of West Country tors. The first time I came here I thought I’d maybe taken a wrong turn, daydreamed down the M5 and parked up somewhere near Dartmoor. And I assumed I really was half-asleep when I spotted road signs pointing to somewhere called The Bog.
What a name! This for
