Pete's Walks - Malvern Hills walk (page 5 of 6)
If you are considering walking this route yourself, please see my disclaimer. You may also like to see these notes about the maps and GPX files.
Instead of retracing my earlier route over Perseverance Hill, I turned left and followed the road at Wyche Cutting. When it turned left, I took a bridleway going right, again intending to follow paths along the eastern flank of the hills. Again I can only be rather vague about this section,as there are more paths than the OS map shows. I think I may have inadvertently kept left at a fork, because the map shows the bridleway running along the top edge of a wood whereas, without necessarily intending to, I was now walking through a wood. But I knew I had to again simply try to contour along the hillside, trying not to lose too much height. So at a couple of forks I took the right fork so as to keep higher up. I stopped on a bench somewhere in these woods to eat a rather late lunch. At one point I came to a path T-junction, where it was obvious I needed to go left to continue southwards along the hillside - here I left the woods, the path running just above them with a steep grassy slope rising up on my right. Eventually I came to a fork where I could see Black Hill north just ahead - I continued with my usual policy of forking right to keep to the higher ground. but could have saved a bit of effort by keeping left here. My path rose slightly and met the path I'd taken up Pinnacle Hill, where I turned left to go downhill - the left fork would have simply brought me straight to the bottom of this slope.
The start of a bridleway going south
Bridleway going south along the eastern flank of the Malverns
Bridleway going south along the eastern flank of the Malverns
Bridleway going south along the eastern flank of the Malverns
Bridleway going south along the eastern flank of the Malverns
Bridleway going south along the eastern flank of the Malverns
Bridleway going south along the eastern flank of the Malverns
Bridleway going south along the eastern flank of the Malverns
Zoomed-in shot south-east towards the Cotswolds
Looking back, the furthest hill is Worcestershire Beacon
Bridleway on the flank of Pinnacle Hill - if I'd kept left rather than right at the previous fork, it would have slightly shortened the route
Instead of going up Black Hill north, I now switched to the west flank of the hills, a broad and level path running to the right of Black Hill. This eventually brought me to a car park, where I continued across some grass to a minor road which I followed back to the British Camp car park. Since leaving North Hill, the skies had been getting steadily greyer and darker, and it had finally started to rain as I passed Black Hill, so I hung around in the car park for a few minutes, dithering as to whether I should continue southwards up British Camp. Fortunately the rain, which was never very heavy anyway, stopped and the skies looked a little brighter, so I took the path that started through a gate next to the car park (to the left as you face the road) - another couple of paths start through gates in the car park, I'd be retuning along one of those.
Descending Pinnacle Hill towards Black Hill north - I avoided the latter by taking a level path to the right (west) of it
The path along the west of Black Hill
The path along the west of Black Hill
The road back to the hotel and the car park for British Camp
Information about British Camp
This is a repeat of a photo from earlier on, just to show how impressive the hill fort is - it's a zoomed-in shoot of British Camp, looking south from Black Hill north (the Iron Age Hill fort extends as far as the hill on the left)
The path up British Camp
The path up British Camp