Weather: what a dull day! The camera doesn’t do justice to it! Down by the river the gloom seems to be accentuated by the silence – no wind, no distant traffic sounds, no little aeroplanes, no loud-talking walkers or cyclists. In fact there’s no-one else at all.  I’m not complaining! There’s a lovely feel to this little corner of Shropshire, where the long-closed station stands near the white-painted bridge. We’d better keep moving though – it will be getting dark soon

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We cross it about half-way around the walk – a bridge, then a ford (with a footbridge…). There’s barely a cloud in the sky, and the sunshine is really making the most of the remaining colour in the trees and hedges. Most of the leaves have fallen.

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It’s the old road along Corvedale. We’ve walked along the south-western part a few times – we did a short stretch last Sunday – but not the north-eastern part. That’s the way we’ll head today, from the road junction near Thonglands, then cut across to Stanton Long. Now we’re heading back south-west towards Holdgate, where there’s an ancient church and a bench for chocolate purposes. These are very quiet ways – surfaced roads carrying very little traffic. Grass grows in the middle of Rowe Lane, always a good sign!

It hasn’t been quite as sunny as I’d expected and hoped, but for the last half-hour the sun comes out and everything is golden. Wonderful!

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The clouds cleared and for a little over an hour, the sun shone brightly – perfectly timed for our walk across the fields to the east of Linley Green. The route (a public footpath, but there isn’t really a path as such) follows the woodland’s edge until it reaches the top of the steep slopes above the Severn. Here, we’ll head back towards Linley Brook and make our way round to Willey and back up Scots Lane to the car. It’s great to be out on an afternoon like this!

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A pleasantly calm afternoon in quiet contryside – across the Fiery Fields to Lodge Lane, where there are still plenty of leaves on the trees, then over the road to Benthall Lane. At the hall, we’ll take to the fields again and head for home.

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Don’t they sound dull! Lazy estate agents perhaps? Comer woods are anything but dull today – the sun is shining, backlighting the gold of the leaves, and while it’s shining, we’ll escape from the woods into the bright daylight near the farms at Mose. Re-entering the woodland takes us past the pools (Wall, Seggy and Brim – they’re in advertising, I’d say…), where the beeches – and toadstools – are at their best.

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A walk from the NT car park in Much Wenlock – up the lane, back along the Edge as far as Stokes’s Barn, across the main road, through the (muddy!) woods, down through The Sytche, across the back of the school, through the Linden Fields and up the High Street. Very pleasant too, apart from the interminably grey skies…

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It’s murky too – there’s not much light, but at least it’s dry. We’re walking from Benthall Hall, via Posenhall and Wyke to Benthall Edge. Just about everything in sight is on the warm side of the spectrum, from the rich browns of the toadstools to the gold of the leaves. Soon they’ll all be gone and we’ll be into winter.

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Walking from Corve Dale to Hope Dale, from Hungerford to Topley and back – some familiar ground and some new. It’s dry but gloomy – the sun’s trying to break through in the distance, but never quite succeeding here – we’re in the wrong place. The weather may be dull but the seasonal shades are eye-catching.

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…beside the Severn again. We walked this way in late September (see
Colemore Green and Astley Abbotts), when there was “plenty of increasingly-autumnal colour”. The season has moved on – most of the colour we enjoyed then has fallen to the ground, but there’s still no shortage of autumn shades in this quiet corner of Shropshire.

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