Crossing the bridge, we obtain a good view of the church reflected in the placid river; and thereafter we stretch away along the Watling Street, Rome's grand Prætorian thoroughfare of days gone by. Presently Uppington and its ruined castle appear upon our left, looking across Tern river to Withington, where the curious church brasses are.

By-and-by we come to Hay Gate, where, as the name suggests, we enter upon the 'Royal Haye of Wellington,' a tract of woodland emparked by the Normans from the Forest of Mount Gilbert. This forest was formerly very extensive, spreading over more than one of the old Domesday Hundreds; and it was not until John's reign that a charter was obtained to disafforest the district.

So now, with the smoke of Wellington lurking upon the rear, we set our faces southwards, where the dark wooded flanks of the Wrekin swell upwards to meet the sky. Geologists tell us the Wrekin is the oldest mountain in England; and, as the typical hill of our county, it has given rise to the time-honoured Salopian toast, 'To All Round the Wrekin.'

Folk-lore, too, has had its say anent this famous hill. 'The Devil,' so the story runs, 'had an old spite against Shrewsbury, so he determined to bring a flood upon it: he would stop up the Severn! For this purpose he came with a great spadeful of earth; but, outwitting himself, as many of his children do, he lifted more than he could carry. Presently he became fatigued upon his way to the river, and let some of the mould fall—that is the Ercal (a smaller hill adjoining the larger). Then he upset it all—and that is the Wrekin.'

Beneath the hanging woods of Ercal lies our onward way. After passing Buckatree, i.e. Buck-i'-the-Tree, Hall, we traverse a shady dingle, and tackle the climb to the summit of old Wrekin himself; an exhilarating pull beneath whispering fir-trees, and by grassy glades carpeted with soft moss and springy pine needles, glimpses of blue distance between whiles whetting one's appetite for the good things to come. Nor is the scene wanting in animation, the ubiquitous lover and his lass figuring prominently in every prospect: for Wrekin's brow is a favourite haunt of picknickers and holiday folk from all the Midland parts.

From 'Hell's Gate' we ascend to 'Heaven's Gate,' and so win our way to the brow of the Wrekin, 1,335 feet above the sea. 'There is on the Toppe of this Hill a delicate plaine Ground, and in this plaine a fayre Fountaine,' wrote Leland, the antiquary, long ago. No water is to be found there now except such as collects, from time to time, in the 'Raven's Bowl,' a cup-like depression on the top of a conical outcrop of rock, known as the 'Bladder, (or Balder's) Stone.' At the foot of this rock there is a deep, narrow, crooked cleft, yclept the 'Needle's Eye.' Now the fable goes that, if any young maid dips her foot into the Raven's Bowl, and then 'threads the Needle's Eye,' by scrambling through the cloven rock, she will be married within a twelvemonth, 'so sure as there's acherns in Shropshire.'

Owing to an isolated situation, the Wrekin commands a better all-round view than some of his loftier compeers. To merely chronicle a lot of remote hill-tops would, however, convey but a bald impression of a scene which owes so much to atmospheric effect; so we will only remark that the prospect embraces hills so wide asunder as Axe Edge, near Buxton, and the Brecon Beacons in South Wales; Cader Idris, above Dolgelly, and Bardon Hill in Leicestershire—'a delightfully awful prospect,' as someone has quaintly described it.

A goodly cantle of Shropshire lies at our feet, like a map unfurled on a table; its heights and hollows beautifully diversified by cornfields and orchards, verdant pastures and ruddy plough-fields; while in and between the green hedgerows are seen, like the meshes of a huge net.

Towards the east, the landscape is sadly marred by the smoke of the Shropshire coalfield; so we turn to the opposite quarter, where the Wrekin, falling away by Primrose Hill, bathes his feet in the silver Severn. Yonder in the vale we can just descry the ruined Abbey of Buildwas, with Wenlock church-steeple peeping over a neighbouring hill. That high-lying village away to the left is Little Wenlock, 'Wenlock under the Wrekin,' as it was anciently called.