A 154-mile circuit of Herefordshire linking its five market towns through orchard country, river valleys and border hills
Indicative — sampled from open terrain data along the simplified route.
The Herefordshire Trail is a 154-mile circular route around the county, joining its five market towns — Ledbury, Ross-on-Wye, Kington, Leominster and Bromyard — with the villages and farmland between them. Being a loop it has no fixed start, though most walkers begin at Ledbury, and it can be taken in either direction. It is long enough to want a week or more, and is more often walked a section at a time; the route divides into fifteen day stages.
This is quiet, worked country rather than wild upland: orchards and hop yards, black-and-white timbered villages, rolling meadow and the wooded valleys of the Wye, the Monnow, the Dore and the Arrow. There are hills, but they come as ridges and viewpoints rather than sustained climbs — Marcle Ridge, Garway Hill and Wapley Hill among them, each giving a long look over the border towards Wales. The walking is graded moderate, well waymarked, and rarely far from a village with a bed for the night.
Because the trail is built around the market towns, resupply and accommodation are easy, and each town makes a natural place to join or leave. Public transport is the weak point — this is deep rural country, and only Leominster and Ledbury have stations, both on the line between Hereford and the north — so linking sections often means arranging lifts or a car at each end.
The route was devised in 2000 by members of the Herefordshire Ramblers and stitched together from the county’s rights of way. It works as a portrait of Herefordshire, taking in the border hills, the cider and hop country, and the four river valleys that shape it, all on one continuous line.
