Some hilltop views inspire rapture, others a sense of doom. Some just evoke a mood of quiet, affirmatory contemplation – a feeling that all is as it should be in the world. The Malverns, on the Herefordshire – Worcestershire border, definitely fall into the latter category.
Dominating the Severn plain like the outline of a sleeping dinosaur, the range – roughly 10 miles from north to south – affords a sensational view across five counties. Admittedly, it’s only just out of earshot of the M5, and on a clear day the messy fringes of Birmingham litter the northeastern horizon. But these blots are more than eclipsed by the vision of the patchwork floodplain of the Severn, and the idyllic farmland of deepest Herefordshire rolling west to the Welsh hills.
It’s a quintessentially English view that has, over the centuries, cast a spell over many artists – most famously Elgar, whose Enigma Variations were written here. Auden penned a long love poem to the Malverns, the taught for a spell in the 1930s, and Piers Plowman, William Langland’s fourteenth-century masterpiece, starts with a dream-vision of, “a fair fielde ful of folke,” conceived while gazing from the ridgetop.
The classic walking route, popular since the spa boom of Victorian times, is the traverse between the two highest summits: Worcestershire Beacon (425m) in the north, and Herefordshire Beacon, aka “British Camp” (383 meters), in the south. Lined for most of its length with an Iron-Age earthwork, the ridge path crosses five named peaks, where outcrops of Pre-Cambrian gneiss – a kind of volcanic rock otherwise found only in the far northwest of Scotland – fall away to steep, grassy slopes carpeted in bracken, gorse and red banks of sorrel.
Once you’re clear of the tree level, spellbinding views accompany the entire walk. Moreover, thanks to the walker friendly Hopper Bus service that loops around the hills on summer weekends, you can make it a linear trip, staying high all day and avoiding the long trudge back around the Malvern’s wooded flanks.
Thanks to the North/South ridge routes navigation on the Malverns is relatively simple. Use this route as the basis for exploring the hills and you will be rewarded with startling views and delightful woodland glades. To convert this route to a 12 mile circular walk, retrace your route from the British Camp car park, and follow the signed route to St Anne's Well from the Topograph at the base of the beacon. Bypass the summits to save your weary legs if you wish.
[1] Turn left out of the main entrance to the priory onto Church Street, which will bring you out on Wells Road (with the Tourist Information Centre to your right).
(A) The town of Great Malvern, at the northwest foot of the range, developed around the Norman Priory in the eleventh century, which started life as a Benedictine monastery but was bought by the locals after the Reformation for use as a parish church. Its pride and joy is the unrivaled collection of medieval wall tiles, sited behind the main altar, and some fine stained glass, including a window gifted by Richard III.
Malvern expanded rapidly during the water cure craze of the 1750s, and again with the arrival of the railway line a century later, when grand Victorian hotels and treelined avenues sprang up alongside the old Regency core. Wealthy benefactors paid for paths to be built around the hills, to which patients would be dispatched for bracing walks after a cold water dip, followed by a restorative round of the tea rooms, parks and promenades.
Bear left up the rise onto Belle Vue Terrace, cross the road and look for the wrought-iron gate entrance to Rose Bank Garden next to the Mount Pleasant Hotel, where a sign to “St Anne’s Well” marks the start of our footpath. Ninety-nine steps lead you onto Foley Terrace. At the top, follow a footpath sign which leads to St Anne’s Well.
(B) The best spot at which to savour Malvern’s old spa ambience is St Anne’s Well, (WC near the Cafe) nestled in a wooded combe at the foot of Worcestershire Beacon. In a shelter next to the little café (open Weekends and Fridays), ice-cold water gurgles from the mountainside into a marble font, below a panel recalling the popular rhyme that, “The Malvern Water, says Dr John Wall/Is famed for containing just nothing at all.” Wall was the entrepreneur credited with mid-eighteenth-century rise of the resort, which blossomed despite the fact that local spring water was known to be devoid of health-giving minerals. Whether Dr Wall’s doctorate was in medicine or spin, history doesn’t record.
[2] Walk along the broad, stony track behind the café for 100 metres to the first path junction, keep straight on and drop down for 2 minutes to a second junction. Turn left here uphill through a wooded combe and alongside the stream. After 5 minutes take a left fork, which brings you out on a wide gravel track (Lady Howard De Walden Drive). Follow this track for a few metres and take the obvious rising track around hillside for about 3 minutes to a small rocky outcrop. Bear left and follow the slope steeply to summit of North Hill (397 metres).
[3] From North Hill, drop due West down a clear path to a saddle below, then up the other side to Table Hill (373 metres). Turn left (south-south-west) at the summit and keep to the descending path, which starts to scale Sugarloaf Hill (368 metres) via an obvious ridge route. The onward way from there, along the main Malvern ridge to a second pass and five-way junction (marked with a circular, stone topo -beacon) is clear. Continue uphill to Worcestershire Beacon (425 metres).
(C) One of the Conservators’ notable recent successes has been the installation of a wheelchair-friendly route to the top of windy Worcestershire Beacon. The viewpoint is crowned with a brass “toposcope” on which is inscribed the position of every town, village and landscape feature visible from the spot. Dating from 1899, the plate was engraved from a drawing by Arthur Troyle Griffith, a close friend of Elgar (he later inspired Enigma Variation No.7). In February 2000, thieves made off with the antique, but it was retrieved by police and restored to its original position soon after.
[4] It’s simple walking from the summit of Worcestershire Beacon all the way south, over Summer Hill and down to the road and car parks at Upper Wyche WC and pub available at Upper Wyche.
(D) The pass to the south of Worcestershire Beacon, where the B4218 crosses the ridgetop at Upper Wyche, marks the start of the wheelchair route to the range’s high point. In times past, this same gap through the Malverns was a landmark on an important salt route stretching from the River Severn (only 11km/7miles east of here) into the Welsh border region.
The onward path begins to the left (east) of the pass, and presses steeply uphill to crest a series of four peaks: Perseverance Hill, Jubilee Hill, Pinnacle Hill and, finally, Black Hill. As you approach Wynds Point, the path drops right and follows the B432 briefly to arrive at the snack stall and hotel opposite the British Camp car park.
[5] Take the lower (left) of the two paths leading from the car park, which contours around the east flank of the hill fort, above Tinker’s Hill reservoir. At the saddle pass below Millennium Hill, follow the well-made footpath up towards the summit. The best views are from the very top of Herefordshire Beacon itself, from where a gentle descent takes you back to the car park.
(D) To the south rise the stepped ramparts of Herefordshire Beacon, or “British Camp”, as the fort carved from the hill’s summit is known. Originally dug by Iron Age settlers in the third century BC, they were later re-modelled by the Normans into a motte-and-bailey castle. The view from the camp ranks alongside that from Worcestershire Beacon, only with the added interest of the Malvern Hills themselves, which taper northwards to the Midlands, rising and falling in a majestic arc.