A Six Raven Walk on the Malverns: Wyche to Wynds Point

Or possibly a Four and then Two Of Them Again Raven Walk ... ? Anyhow, it doesn't really matter because we were up on the ridge south of Upper Wyche (whence we had headed north on our previous Malverns walk), ignoring the instructions I'd printed off that suggest you do the lower woodland section of the circular route first, in favour of seeing the sunrise ...

... if, that is, there was going to be one through all the cloud.  

east over Worcestershire

north to Worcestershire Beacon

Oh but in all directions, it was beautiful. 

south to Pinnacle Hill and beyond

west over Herefordshire to Wales

We'd crawled out of bed at 4am, pausing only for a cup of tea ... 

... so breakfast should have been a priority but we just walked for a time, beguiled by the blue, autumnal light. 

Perseverance Hill and Jubilee Hill were already behind us when we stopped on Pinnacle Hill, at the site of what is commonly described as two possible round barrows.

A drooling Ted, who'd spotted a young rabbit up ahead, had to make do with broken off bits of homemade quiche. 

Sounds were magnified in the stillness. The ratchet of a cockerel, the mewling and puking of a buzzard, ravens and crows, the bleating of nearby sheep, a church clock somewhere below us striking seven ... 

... and the yelp of a border collie who's just nuzzled an electrified fence, poor lad.

We were off again. Up ahead, British Camp - somewhere I'm itching to explore - had come into view, although we'd only get tantalising glimpses of it on this visit. 

Looking back the way we came

Over Black Hill

At Wynds Point there was a view of somewhere I did plan to visit later that day, namely Little Malvern Priory, which was looking rather like a Tuscan campanile in the valley below. 

We walked on as far as the road that cuts through the hills at this point, and then retraced our steps. 

Past Wynds Point we took the path that leads down through the woods on the eastern side of the ridge, and soon reached Berington Quarry where we sat on the base of the winding drum and drank what passed for tea in our thermos.

What looked like a family group of four ravens flew overhead - one parent and possibly two youngsters, followed a little later by another adult, the two larger birds conversing with each other across the expanse of excavations.

From then it was 'simply' a matter of finding our way by reversing the instructions given on my downloaded walk. 

'You slaaaaag - '

This involved much use of the word 'counter-intuitive' by the member of the party who wasn't a dog and wasn't in charge of the map. 

Quick, the ring-wraiths are coming!

Two (more) ravens treated us to a fly-past.

Our next stopping point was Holy Well, the most important spring of many in the Malverns. It is the site, so they say, of remarkable historic cures and the present-day production of Holywell Malvern Spring Water. 

A tiny visitor's cubicle told the story of how stalwart locals won the right to use the word Malvern on their bottles as part of their trade name, after Coca-Cola, which closed down production of Malvern Water and tried to sell the site for development into luxury flats, refused permission. 

Onward. The route through the woods mentioned 'bench' and later 'green bench'. Actually, there were lots of benches and most of them were painted green. 

So I checked we were on the right path by turning around to see the waymarks that were behind us ... 

where the path has just split into three

where the path has already passed to the side of a prominent rocky outcrop

... and we found ourselves back where we started, with all the rest of the day ahead. 

King John wasn't all that bad, you know

My arrival in Worcester, in squalling rain and bluster, was inauspicious. As soon as I reached the walkway by the River Severn, my umbrella blew inside out and all the metal spokes snapped. It looked like a collapsed bat and there was nothing for it but to bin it. 

In relentless rain following weeks of drought, the tale of Old Testament-style flooding told by the bricks set into the wall behind the Cathedral was all too plausible.

Sundays are not great days for Cathedral visiting. The problem is that people tend to use them for worship. But the purpose of my journey was to fetch my mother home from a brief sojourn in Nottingham and I determined to Make The Most It.  

And lo, when I got inside, I wasn't surprised to find a large part of the Cathedral roped off to visitors and a service about to start.

It looked all distant and golden, like a biblical heaven. 

There was nothing for it but to fossick around the bits I could see. Like the nave where I found myself paying attention to things that don't normally hold my interest.

The most riveting thing about Mary is her address, Slaughter Hall. 

1889 pulpit, part of restoration by Sir George Gilbert Scott

There were many tombs - a lot of bishops, and also of unidentifiable men who were probably bishops. It made me wonder what the point is. Better surely to be burnt and scattered, or to be buried with an acorn in your belly button. 

It would give these little fellers a break ...

... and it would be better than running the risk of being sawn in half, like Bishop Someone-or-other looks like he might be in danger of being. 

On the other hand, if you had a tomb like this, you could sail it over the Seas of Oblivion, or hitch it to an Irish cob and journey Down The Deep Lanes. 

Ricardo Eedes, Dean of Worcester, died 1604

1850s-60s font, part of restoration by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The Moore monument, c 1633

Abigail, wife of Godfrey Goldisburgh, Bishop of Gloucester, died 1613

Tired of piety, I wandered off to explore the Chapter House and the Cloisters. 

The latter have a series of stained glass windows by Archibald John Davies of the Bromsgrove School of Applied Arts. They date from the 1930s and give a potted history of the Church with special reference to Worcester. 

There seems to have been a fair bit of burning going on ...

The burning of Tyndale's bibles, c1530

The burning of Bishop John Hooper in Gloucester, 1555

The burning of service books on College Green, Worcester c1547-58

... not to mention assassinating and executioning.


The death of Becket and the penance of Henry II

The execution of Charles I

And look how massive Elizabeth I was! 
 
But I wanted to get into the rest of the Cathedral. It was, I worked out, almost 40 years since I'd last been there and time was running out on my two hour parking slot. And I needed to see the widescreen technicolour stuff, historically speaking ... 

... namely, the tombs of Prince Arthur (elder brother of Henry VIII) ...  


The funeral of Prince Arthur, 1502

... and the tomb of King John. 

Yes, John, so bad they named him just the once. 

The signing of Magna Carta, 1215 and the burial of King John, 1216  

But not unreasonably, given where we were, the worshippers were still worshipping.

I took in a few more tombs.


Sir John Beauchamp of Powick and Alcester with Elizabeth Pateshull, died c 1389

Robert Wilde and Margaret Cooling, husband and wife, died 1607 and 1606 respectively


Then - at last - the red ropes were unhooked and the wrought iron gates opened.

I whizzed through the Crypt, sweating at the thought of my car. I bolted up the North Aisle.


Unidentified knight, c 1240 

I admired roofs ... 

... and the beautiful east window. 

Another knight, 13th century

Aha, Prince Arthur's chantry ...

... and his tomb. Strange to think how different English history might have been had Arthur not died at the age of 15. Not least, how would King Arthur of legend have stood up against the legacy of a later, upstart King Arthur I? 

The time was a quarter of an hour past my car parking slot. Through a gaggle of Japanese tourists I could see another tomb. Had to be John. I waited for them to drift away. 

There he was ... the tyrant and oppressor who inadvertently gave us our charter of liberties.

‘Foul as it is, hell itself is made fouler by the presence of King John,’ wrote Matthew Paris in the 1230s.

'Tell you what,' I whispered in the ear of this, the earliest English royal effigy, 'if you fix it for me not to have a parking ticket, I'll tell everyone you weren't that bad ... or at least, better than King Henry VIII.' 

He didn't answer and nor did the creature at his feet, his mouth being too full of sword.

I dashed out of the Cathedral. The car park was minutes away but at every turn I ran into a dead end. 

And I got wetter and wetter. 'Damn you, King John the Only.'

Back at the car, my windscreen was ticketless. Fantastic. 

And although he was rubbish at thinning traffic and stopping torrential rain, later in the day, my new mate proved great at supplying an empty disabled parking bay right next to the service station doors so that my mother could make a beeline for the ladies. 

And also at fixing it for my dinner to come straight out of the oven as I staggered through the door. 

Could be worse, John. You could be King Eadwig.