Paths are mysterious things, tracks through time and space, spanning decades, centuries, millennia; the footworn proof of repeat passing.
This first path runs along the top of Wenlock Edge, a twenty mile limestone ridge that crosses from east into south Shropshire. These days it is a popular resort for recreational walkers, but the route itself is probably thousands of years old, used by prehistoric traders who travelled the county’s less wooded uplands into Wales. The traded goods included finely worked stone axes of the Neolithic era, 5-6,000 years ago. Later, itinerant smiths (and seeming recylcers of damaged metal ware, including fine cast arrow- and spearheads of the Bronze Age) came this way.
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This second path is of more recent origins despite the sepia looks. It marks a segment of the Severn Valley Railway, opened through Much Wenlock in the late 1860s and closed in the 1960s. Now the original track bed is much colonised by ash and hazel and ivy, kept in check by the county footpath wardens. It’s hard to conjure the steam trains that once came roaring through here, bound for the Wenlock Edge quarries to take on truckloads of limestone, the flux needed for South Wales’ steel making.
And then there’s that other ghost train, the festive Great Western special that every July brought thousands of people from far and wide to watch (and take part in) the Much Wenlock Olympian Games. Back then, this still popular annual event) comprised many and varied sporting activities, devised by the town’s doctor, William Penny Brookes to foster good health and wellbeing among ordinary folk. His activism did not stop at health either. There were livelihoods to improve too, so he also fought for the line extension that brought the railway to Much Wenlock.
Over the years we lived in Wenlock this was a favourite place to wander, and in every season.
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And so paths like these extend in ever more dimensions: of imagination; of history; of recollection and memory; of the telling of tales.
Copyright 2026 Tish Farrell
Lens-Artists: Where does it lead? This week Egidio sets the theme with an enticing gallery of photos. Go see!
