Long Mynd Shropshire
The Long Mynd is the finest upland walking destination in Shropshire, a broad plateau of Precambrian moorland rising to over 500 metres above the Church Stretton Valley in the southern Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty whose combination of the open heather moorland, the deep glacial valleys cutting into the plateau from the east and the extensive views from the summit ridge across the Welsh borders creates one of the finest accessible upland landscapes in the English Midlands. The name means the Long Mountain in Welsh.
The Church Stretton Valley below the eastern escarpment provides the most dramatic approach to the plateau, the small Victorian spa town surrounded by the high ground of the Long Mynd to the west, Caer Caradoc and the Stretton Hills to the east in one of the most completely enclosed valley settings available in the English hill country. The combination of the Victorian architecture of Church Stretton and the wild moorland immediately above creates an unusual juxtaposition of settled English culture and open upland that has been attracting visitors since the Victorian era, when the town was marketed as Little Switzerland.
The Portway, an ancient ridgeway track crossing the Long Mynd plateau from north to south, is one of the oldest roads in Shropshire, and the walking along the ridge between the deep valleys of Ashes Hollow and Carding Mill Valley provides some of the finest ridge walking available in the south Shropshire hills.