Step back in time by heading to these hills

The one drawback is that it would mean travelling back in time hundreds of millions of years, so we'll have to settle for the present-day reality of the area just to the west of the Malvern Hills, and our own powers of imagination.

Valuable help in formulating such unlikely images is provided by Herefordshire and Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust, which has erected an information board beside a footpath below the Wyche, full of fascinating facts about those distant days and the strange life forms that flourished in that tropical sea.

It's also informative about the amazing history of the local rocks. The pre-Cambrian ones at The Wyche, for instance, are 700 million years old, and it took 40 million years for the sequence of rocks from the top of the Purlieu to the Mathon road to be deposited, starting around 445 million years ago. Geological history covers a mind-boggling timespan, but human history in this area also goes back quite a few years.

At Southend Farm, near Weobley Cross, which is on the route of this walk, a Bronze Age cemetery was unearthed in 1910.

It contained human remains, cremation urns and bronze spearheads considered to be between 3,000 and 4,000 years old.

There are also two Bronze Age round barrows that can be visited on the Malvern Hills just above Colwall.

DIRECTIONS

1Use the station footbridge to cross the railway, walk past the Charlie Ballard Nature Reserve and go into a field. Follow the left-hand boundary, cross a stile in the corner and turn left. Keep straight on at a junction, walking along a farm track to meet a lane. Turn left and walk to the main road. Cross to a footpath opposite, which uses the driveway to The Winnings for a while before heading left into the grounds of Downs School. Turn right, keep straight on at a junction and proceed through a field, along the remains of an old green lane, through another field and then through a patch of woodland. When you reach the far side of the wood you'll see a stile in front of you. Don't cross this, but turn left on an unsigned path which leads to a track, Brockhill Road.

2 Turn right, and keep straight on at the junction by the HWEHT information board. Take a path on the left at the next junction, a little further on. Turn right through two fields then along a track to Harcourt Road. Turn left, then take a footpath on the right after about 500m, next to the access to Ciderstone Cottage. Turn right along a field edge and cross a footbridge to another field. Walk across it to meet a hedge then keep straight on beside the hedge until you come to a corrugated-iron shed. Go through a gate on the left, walk to a lane and turn left.

3 Take a track on the right, next to a house called Wakelands. Ignore a path branching left by Tythings Cottage and stay on the track - despite the lack of waymarking, it is a public footpath. After passing a solitary cottage, go through a gate and keep straight on. At the next gate, the waymarking resumes and the track is easily followed to an old quarry on Cockshot Hill. Take a path on the left which leads to Mathon. Turn right along the road.

4Join a path on the left, almost opposite the church. Walk along a field edge, parallel with a track, before crossing a stile to join the track, which leads to a junction. Cross a stile and turn left along a field edge until the path bears left to enter another field. Walk straight across to the other side

and then straight across another field to meet a fence corner. Continue in the same direction to find a stile. Proceed along a fenced path to join a lane at South End.

5Walk to a junction at Weobley Cross and turn right, then immediately right again on a footpath. Cross a field, heading towards a black-and-white cottage. Turn left along a lane, then right on a footpath. Walk along the left-hand edge of a field then cross a pair of stiles in the bottom corner. Go diagonally right to a footbridge and keep left through the next two fields. After crossing another footbridge, the path continues along the left edge of a field to a fence corner. Go straight on across the field to a path junction. Take the left-hand path, along the left edge of another field.

6Cross a footbridge into the next field and you'll see that there are two stiles ahead of you. Go towards the left-hand one, at the left corner of a copse. Without crossing the stile, turn left and walk past a redundant third stile. Continue in the same direction, ignoring a branching path, to meet a lane. Turn right, then first left on a path which goes towards Downs School. Turn right at a junction, along a track to a road. Cross to a path opposite which leads to another road. Turn left to Colwall station and village centre.

FACTFILE

Start: Colwall Station, grid ref SO756424.

Length: Seven miles/11.5km.

Maps: OS Explorer 190, OS Landranger 150.

Terrain: A mixture of flat and gently rolling farmland, mostly pasture.

Footpaths: Excellent, apart from patchy waymarking.

Stiles: 33.

Parking: Colwall.

Public transport: Frequent daily trains; also possible by bus, changing at Great Malvern; Rail enquiries 08457 484950, Traveline 0870 608 2608 or www.traveline.org.uk

Refreshments: On offer in Colwall and Mathon.

PLEASE NOTE This walk has been carefully checked and the directions are believed to be accurate at the time of publication. No responsibility is accepted by either the author or publisher for errors or omissions, or for any loss, accident or injury, however caused.