Wyre Valley Rail trail Part 1 Worcester Foregate St to Droitwich 22/2/25

 There was only one section left to complete the Wyre valley Rail trail  so today was to be the final day. Caught the train to Foregate St then set off northbound. Initially the trail follows the Worcester and Birmingham canal. When the railway line is encountered at Blackpole the  canal is left and the route takes you through the ravenmeadow golf course and Tappenhall until one reaches the other canal, The Droitwich canal at Porters Mill. The canal is then followed past Salwarpe to Droitwich

The route took 3 hours and covered 9.57 miles

The whole route-

Total 30.1 miles

Wyre Valley Rail trail Part 3 Hartlebury to Kidderminster

The third part of the Wyre Valley RailTrail is from Hartlebury to Kidderminster. I caught the train to Hartlebury. The route was easy to follow and easy to do. It included a disused railway line and a canal. It ended at Kidderminster railway station which was very busy as it was the Diesel weekend. The return train journey was from Kidderminster to Shrub hill, where yet again WMR terminated the train but luckily I could catch the train from Paddington to get back to Malvern

Wyre Valley Rail Trail Part 2 Droitwich to Hartlebury

As it was going to be a nice day I decided to continue with the Wyre Valley Railtrail, the Droitwich to Hartlebury section

I caught the train to Droitwich and aimed for Hartlebury. The walk was pleasant until I found a footpath diversion sign, whicn may have meant a lot to worcestershire county council (quoting footpath numbers for the diversion, not much use on an OS map!) The cause of the diversion was an enormous solar farm

9.4 miles were completed in 3h33

 

Wyre Valley Rail trail Part 4 & 5 Kidderminster to Hagley

 Since doing the Malvern to Evesham RailTrail in May 2023 another, Wyre Valley route has been produced between Worcester and Hagley (the worcs border!)

As it was supposed to be sunny today I left the Malvern Hills to the visitors and did the 2 parts furthest away from home Kidderminster to Blakedown (part 4) and Blakedown to Hagley (part 5)

I travelled to Kidderminster, arriving too early for any activity on the SVR so started the walk at 0840

The first part of the route passed the Aggborough football ground and then the SVR engine sheds 

Next the Kidderminster golf course was crossed.  From this point on the route was rural and quite muddy which the geese seemed to like

 with a lot of horses (malvern hills in the distance). 

Blakedown station was reached after 5.61 miles in 2 hours.

The next part of the route (part 5) was Blakedown to Hagley. Being only 2 miles i decided to do that as well. It was still sunny and fields had a lot of stabled horses.  The 2.26 miles only took 54 minutes.

The return journey was Hagley to Kidderminster to Worcester Foregate street to Malvern. Worcester racecourse looked very wet:-