Distance: 19.7 miles / 31.7 kilometres
Total ascent: 1,667 feet / 508 metres
Walking time: 6.5 to 8.5 hours
Stage 1 of The Shire Way aims to emulate Frodo, Sam and Pippin’s first day of walking in The Lord of the Rings (or rather their first night, for they begin after the sun has gone down), from the front door of Bag End to a patch of fir-wood beside the narrow road leading to the River Brandywine. The 20-mile stage is divided into two legs.
Leg 1A: Moseley to Quinton
Just as the hobbits set out from the top of Hobbiton Hill, so Leg 1A departs from the top of Green Hill, between Moseley and King’s Heath. To avoid the pricking ears and prying eyes of Hobbiton, Frodo decides to lead his friends at first in the opposite direction from Bucklebury and Crickhollow, i.e. westwards. Leg 1A also initially takes you further from the River Avon by descending the northern slopes of Green Hill. (According to the scheme of The Shire Way, westwards in the Shire translates as northwards in the West Midlands.)
After following a lane westwards, the hobbits turn left across the fields. There are now few fields in south Birmingham, but at this point The Shire Way also swings left towards Edgbaston.
West of Hobbiton, Frodo and his companions use a narrow bridge to cross the Water, which is ‘no more than a winding black ribbon, bordered with leaning alder-trees’. Thanks to engineers, the River Rea no longer winds its way north of Moseley, but alders certainly grow along its banks near the footbridge in Calthorpe Park.
After another ‘mile or two’, the furtive hobbits think it prudent to cross with haste the ‘great road from the Brandywine Bridge’. It is a similar distance from the River Rea to the Oratory in Edgbaston, where Leg 1A intersects with Monument Road, part of the Roman road to Bidford-on-Avon.
Beyond the East-West Road, the hobbits enter Tookland and bend south-eastwards. Before long, they are climbing the first slopes of Green Hill Country. In imitation, Leg 1A begins to turn south-westwards, crossing into historic Staffordshire at Bearwood. The route then ascends Lightwoods Hill (on which Warley Woods sit), which is the first real outlier of the South Staffordshire/North Worcestershire chain. Just as the lamps of Hobbiton and Bywater disappear at this point ‘in the folds of the darkened land’, so it is that Birmingham is lost from sight once Leg 1A crests Lightwoods Hill.
After walking for ‘about three hours’, the hobbits eat a ‘very frugal supper’ beneath some swaying birch trees. The first leg of The Shire Way should also take about three hours to walk and terminates at the bottom of Birch Road in Quinton, where there is a pub (The Amber Tavern), a supermarket and several restaurants.
Apart from mimicking Tolkien’s fictional journey, Leg 1A of The Shire Way also visits his grandfathers house (c. 1905-1930), his father’s house (late 1880s), his father’s workplace (1880s), four of Tolkien’s own residences (1902-1911) and his church (1902-1911).
Alternative Start: Birmingham City Centre
If you would rather start The Shire Way from New Street Railway Station in Birmingham city centre, you can do a short tour of some sites relating to the lives of Tolkien and his family, before joining Leg 1A in north Edgbaston.
Leg 1B: Quinton to Rednal
Leg 1B of The Shire Way leads you out of the city and into the undulating countryside south-west of Birmingham. After supper, the hobbits soon strike the ‘narrow road, that… wound over the skirts of the Green Hills towards Woody End’. Similarly, Leg 1B reaches the East Worcestershire Ridgeway at Moor Street. Unfortunately, it is not practicable to follow the ancient route using the busy and hazardous roads of Bartley Green and Frankley, so Leg 1B shadows the Ridgeway for four miles along the Illey Valley, west of the M5 and east of the Clent Hills.
Leg 1B rejoins the Ridgeway in the Waseley Hills Country Park and keeps to it as far as the Lickeys, where Beacon Hill acts as the ‘steep slope’ which finally induces Pippin to call for a rest. A patch of dry fir-wood, such as the one in which the hobbits sleep, can be found between Beacon Hill and the Old Rose and Crown Hotel in Rednal. The headwater stream of the River Arrow, which flows past the hotel, contains several ‘little falls’, although I wouldn’t recommend following the hobbits’ example by drinking and bathing in it.
NEXT: Leg 1A of The Shire Way