Distance: 23.5 miles / 37.8 kilometres
Total ascent: 1,387 feet / 423 metres
Walking time: 8 to 10 hours
Stage 2 of The Shire Way attempts to emulate the second day of Frodo, Sam and Pippin’s journey in The Lord of the Rings, although the route deviates from the busy Ridgeway to visit two sites of particular significance to J.R.R. Tolkien. The 24-mile stage is divided into three legs.
Leg 2A: Rednal to Tardebigge
After spending the first night of their journey amid a raised fir-wood, the hobbits bathe and breakfast beside a stream, at a point where it dips beneath the undulating narrow road. Leg 2A commences from a similar location in Rednal, where the headwater of the River Arrow crosses our path on the wooded slopes of Beacon Hill. The Shire Way does not immediately proceed southwards, however. It first makes a loop around Tolkien’s cherished Rednal Hill. This includes a glimpse of the cottage where his mother died and he was orphaned at the age of twelve.
The next part of the hobbits’ trek is characterised by a series of climbs and descents that culminate in a view of the road winding toward the Woody End. This provokes Frodo to recall some childhood verses about The Road which ‘goes ever on and on’ and must be followed in spite of ‘weary feet’ (perhaps suggestive of the author’s own philosophy in the face of so much adversity). The Lickey Hills between Rednal and Barnt Green, where Tolkien was a frequent guest of his aunt’s family, generate the same ups and downs, interspersed with glimpses of ‘lower lands dotted with small clumps of trees’. Leg 2A ends near a pub (The Tardebigge) and a hilltop church (St Bartholomew’s) overlooking Bromsgrove, the town where Tolkien’s mother and his guardian are buried.
Leg 2B: Tardebigge to Feckenham
Today, the quantity, proximity and speed of motor traffic along the East Worcestershire Ridgeway between Tardebigge and Cookhill is not conducive to enjoyable walking. So, although The Shire Way is predicated on the idea that Tolkien may have had that road in mind when describing the hobbits’ outward journey, Leg 2B instead diverts cross-country towards an important biographical site in the village of Dormston. The landscape is nevertheless of a type that agrees with Tolkien’s description of the events that befall Frodo, Sam and Pippin after lunch, not least their encounter with a Black Rider on a level stretch of road ‘through grass-land sprinkled with tall trees’. Feckenham, with its pubs and village shop, is a pleasant resting place on the way to Dormston.
Leg 2C: Feckenham to Inkberrow
Leg 2C traverses a once densely wooded part of mid-Worcestershire (called the Fleferth in Anglo-Saxon) that is rich in Shire nomenclature, such as Underhill, Stock and Bag End. This is not a matter of coincidence, for the last name belonged to the farmhouse of Tolkien’s aunt in Dormston, where he stayed on more than one occasion.
Little about this section of the route harmonises with the hobbits’ journey (unless one counts the ‘Tolkien Oak’, an ancient and hollow tree about 150 metres east of Bag End). However, if you trust Frodo’s reckoning of distance and direction, Inkberrow is in a comparable situation to the Hobbit village of Woodhall. With its two pubs (including overnight accommodation in The Bull’s Head), Inkberrow is thus a suitable endpoint for Stage 2 of The Shire Way.
NEXT: Leg 2A of The Shire Way