Jane’s Walk 2024 – Day 4

Moses shows no desire to walk today having got out of the car reluctantly holding up his front leg and insisting he had a problem. We decide to leave him with Richard as we are walking along the road and he will bring him later if he recovers.

Leaving Oak Farm, our route takes us not back to the river path, which in this section takes a wide loop, but we take the road to Clifton and on to the Cromme Estate. Cromme House is now owned by the National Trust but the land is farmed by various tenant farmers.

The footpath takes us past various lakes formed from gravel pits which are teeming with water fowl and there are  numerous horses grazing in the area.  The whole place appears very chaotic with many of the metal gates tied up with binder twine and fences secured by wooden boards which makes access difficult despite it being a prescribed footpath. Long strips of the land have been sparsely planted with sunflowers which appeared to be under planted with barley but was possibly last years crop.

We take a wrong route into a property and are told very firmly to return the way we had come by the owner of a large white Palladian house who caught us while working on his roof!

We retrace our steps with our tail between our legs as apparently this section of the Severn Way had been closed for several years although the signs were not clear. We  continue the right detoured way to Severn Stoke where we stop for lunch with our hosts. Our hostess then joined us on the final stretch of the walk.

After negotiating the detour along the A38 we return to the river through pleasant farmland. Nearing Upton on Severn we come across a number of working gravel pits and watch diggers scooping a mixture of gravel and sand and placing it in shoots into barges which then traveled down river to be sorted. It was interesting seeing how close the plimsoll lines to the water was when the boats were full!

We arrive at the pretty medieval town of Upton on Severn and cross the river. This had previously been destroyed in the Civil War of 1651 as had the church near by leaving only the tower still standing. Back to our very comfortable destination with our kind host. A shorter walk today but good to have a more relaxed afternoon in their lovely home