OS Explorer map 190, Malvern Hills & Bredon Hill: Tewkesbury, Ledbury, Pershore & Upton-upon-Severn – I own this map, and had visited it before starting this blog. Visited again for this post 26th December 2022.
Google Maps location links: Great Malvern, Ledbury, Hereford
Over the last several years, I’ve commonly gone on a short holiday with the Dearest Progenitors between Christmas and New Year, most recently going to Ross-on-Wye in 2021 [1]. For the last couple of years, I’ve also been on a holiday with Vesper around Christmas or New Year (the Suffolk coast at the end of 2020, and the North Pennines a year later). This year, however, I mixed things up a bit: I went to stay with my parents at their Northamptonshire home for a few days before Christmas, enabling Vesper and I to fit in our holiday between Christmas and New Year.
We booked a farm cottage just south of Hereford, and had a great time staying there for a week, going on walks and exploring the area, even if it was rather rainy. Our cottage was in map area 189, which I’ve posted about before when I visited Skenfrith Castle on the aforementioned Ross-on-Wye trip with my parents the previous Christmas. Since most of our holiday was in this and other previously-posted map areas, I won’t narrate most of it, though here are some photos.
However, as you’ve probably worked out from the existence of this post, and from its title, we spent some time in and around Great Malvern, which I’ll be telling you about now!
Boxing Day
Following a large family Christmas, on the morning of Boxing Day I drove up to Leicestershire, to collect Vesper from her parents’ house, in my parents’ “dog car” Niko which they’d kindly let me borrow for the week. From there, we headed over towards Hereford. However, our holiday cottage wouldn’t be available until later in the afternoon, so we decided to make a stop in Great Malvern to have a nose around.
Now, in summer 2023, half a year after this visit, Vesper and I moved away from Cambridge, where we shared a house with dear friend Erithacus and cat Truus; in the end we moved to Moreton-in-Marsh. At the time of this trip, we knew we wanted to move, but not yet where to – Vesper travelled to Oxford for work once a fortnight, and wanted to be able to do so more, so we wanted to pick somewhere with fairly easy access to Oxford. We wanted to be in (or at least very close to) the countryside, so it seemed most likely we’d choose some village or small town in the region of Oxford – on which see my next post. However, we also had a quarter of an eye on Malvern, since it’s only about 90 minutes from Oxford on a direct train and importantly – and I think uniquely for somewhere as easily accessed from Oxford as that – is right next to some fairly big hills, namely the Malvern Hills. Eventually, we’d like to live in a properly hilly area, probably in the North of England, but Malvern seemed like it might let us get a bit of that sooner.
For that reason, when we arrived, we first did a bit of a driving tour of some residential areas within walking distance of one of Malvern’s train stations. We got a generally positive impression – the town is pretty, and felt like it had the right balance of “nice but not too posh”. We wanted to be no more than a few minutes’ walk from, ideally, open countryside, but if not at least a green space, and this seemed to be possible from several areas nearish one of the stations. The town being built on a slope also means that most houses and streets have a view out into the country, as well as being able to see the hills themselves looming over the town.
Parking up in central Great Malvern, we had a walk around the town centre, which was very nice. Since we were there on Boxing Day, a lot of things were closed, but we soon settled into a pub for lunch – I was very satisfied with my tomato soup, side salad and onion rings, an example of my often-favoured “starter-and-two-sides” dining strategy. We then walked just a little way up the hillside and back down through the Rose Bank gardens, which were interesting – they’re sort of terraced up the hill, and entering them from above we didn’t realise the grassy area we were on was part of a larger park, so it seemed like a well-kept area of grass just hidden away on the hillside between houses above and below it. Following that, we browsed a bookshop fora while before returning to the car: it was cold but sunny, so lovely walking weather, but with some more travelling to do yet we didn’t feel like climbing the hills on this occasion!
Three days later
As mentioned, our holiday was a rather rainy one, with no dry days the whole time we were in Hereford, though we did manage to get in plenty of nice walks during breaks in the rain, or at least periods of lighter rain. Thursday, though, was looking particularly challenging: there’d be heavy rain for most of the day, the forecast claimed. Looking westwards into Wales seemed much the same, however to the east, Malvern’s forecast was dry and sunny! I wouldn’t normally drive forty minutes for a walk, but it seemed worth it for the weather, so we got in the car fairly promptly on Thursday morning and were off. Given the possibility of moving to Malvern sometime, I thought we’d better go up North Hill and the Worcestershire Beacon, the largest and northernmost of the Malvern Hills, those being the ones immediately next to the town, so which’d be the most easily accessible if we lived there without a car.
In the end, the walk was a mixed experience. It was clear and sunny, which was a nice contrast to our walks the previous days, the hills were pretty, and there were great long views in all directions: west to the Black Mountains, where we’d been walking a couple of days prior, north and east over the pleasant Worcestershire and Gloucestershire countryside. However, predictably since they’re right next to town, and the only big hills for many miles around, these hills are a very popular spot: there were a lot of other people around, and the landscape is fairly “civilised”, with lots of wide paths, benches, dog poo bins and the like. Vesper and I like our hills quiet and wild, which did make us less excited about Malvern as a place to live. The hills still offer better local walks than we’d get in Oxfordshire, and the surrounding less-hilly countryside is nicer too, as is the easy-ish access to other nice outdoorsy areas like the Black Mountains, Wye Valley and so on. However, the distance from Oxford seems a lot less worth it given the Hills themselves are… just okay. Still, I enjoyed the walk!
Our walk took us a couple of hours, so we finished before noon, hungry but not yet feeling justified in getting out the packed lunch. We had plenty of the day still left, and wanted to do another walk back in the Hereford direction, but were in need of a toilet stop before then, so we drove the 15 minutes or so over to Ledbury, still in this map area. There, we ate our sandwiches in the car, before getting out to potter around the town. Ledbury was very nice! There was an interesting selection of shops, cute old buildings, and a cool half-timbered market hall. After a wander, we sat down in a café for some tea and to use their toilets – I had a minty hot chocolate that was, alas, rather over-swet, before going back to the car to drive on to our next walk over by the River Wye, and out of this map area.
Previous visits
I’ve been to Malvern just once before, in July 2009 for the engagement party of my cousin Rice Pile, which was in a hotel in Malvern because, if I remember correctly, his now-wife’s uncle ran the hotel. I don’t think I did anything in Malvern except attend that family party, so not much to report!
Footnotes
[1] Previous such trips were mentioned in my blog posts on Lockerbie in 2017, Malmesbury in 2018, and Ludlow in 2019.
Visiting all the maps! 
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