All Up The Wrekin

A quick walk up one of Shropshire’s most well-known hills

Once upon a time, a giant had a falling out with a man from Shrewsbury. We don’t know what the argument was about — love, crime, or business, your guess is as good as mine — only that it so enraged the giant that he decided to take his revenge out on the whole town the man was from. Knowing it was by a river, he used his (giant-sized, obviously) shovel to dig up a big piece of earth and rock, stuck it on his shoulder and headed out in the direction of Shrewsbury, intending to use it to block the River Severn and flood the town.

Still some way from the town, and unsure how far he had left to go, he came across a man on the road and asked him how far it was to Shrewsbury. The man, a cobbler who had recently been to the town to collect shoes for repair which he was now carrying with him, quickly assessed the situation and told the giant he didn’t know the exact distance but it was quite a way as he opened his bag to shoe the giant all the shoes in there and said he’d worn his way through all of those walking from there to here.

Seeing this, the giant decided that was much to far to walk for a bit of revenge, and instead dumped all his earth and rock on the ground, stuck his shovel in it, then turned around and headed home. And that’s the story of how The Wrekin came to be formed, which might not fit with the geologi evidence, but feels like a good reason why there’s a 400-metre hill in the middle of a wide-open space on the western edge…