Walk the Carding Mill Valley to the Long Mynd plateau, where Pole Bank is 516m high

Climb the Stiperstones to the rock outcrop known as the Devil's Chair

Walk the Port Way, the old ridge track along the Long Mynd

The Long Mynd is a whaleback of heather and bracken above Church Stretton, cut on its eastern side by the Carding Mill Valley and topped at Pole Bank by a view that takes in the Welsh mountains. West across the valley, the Stiperstones run as a quartzite ridge of shattered tors, the biggest and best known of them the Devil's Chair, the rock at the heart of the hill's many legends.

The Long Mynd and the Stiperstones

Walk the inner bailey and the round chapel at Ludlow Castle

Climb the tower of St Laurence's church for the view over the Marches

Buy from the butchers and bakers around the market square

Walk the loop of the Teme below the castle

Ludlow Castle, probably founded by Walter de Lacy around 1075, became one of the great marcher fortresses, held by the Mortimers and later the seat of the Council in the Marches of Wales, with a rare circular chapel in its inner bailey. The town below it kept its medieval grid and nearly 500 listed buildings, and made its name again as a food town with a September festival and a run of butchers, bakers and brewers.

Ludlow: The Castle in the Marches and the Food Town

Walk the full loop of the Severn round the town centre

Find your way through the shuts and passages off the high street

Visit Shrewsbury Abbey across the English Bridge

See the Darwin statue outside his old school

The Severn loops almost completely round Shrewsbury, leaving a neck of dry land that the Normans blocked with a castle; inside the loop the medieval street plan survives with its shuts and passages, and black-and-white timber fronts leaning over them. Charles Darwin was born here in 1809, and the castle, begun on William I's orders soon after the Conquest, was built up by Roger de Montgomery, the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, who also founded the abbey in 1083.

Shrewsbury: The Town Inside a Loop of the Severn

Ride the Bridgnorth Cliff Railway, opened in 1892, between High Town and Low Town

See the leaning Norman tower of Bridgnorth Castle in Castle Gardens

Board the Severn Valley Railway at Bridgnorth station

Walk the High Street and down the Cartway to the river

Bridgnorth is built in two halves, High Town on the cliff top and Low Town on the Severn below, joined since 1892 by a cliff railway that bills itself as England's oldest and steepest inland electric funicular. The Severn Valley Railway runs steam sixteen miles down the valley from here to Kidderminster, and the leaning remains of the Norman keep sit in Castle Gardens at an angle steeper than the tower of Pisa.

Bridgnorth: The Cliff Railway and the Severn Valley Railway

Walk across the Iron Bridge over the Severn, built in 1779 by Abraham Darby III as the world's first major bridge of cast iron, and see the tollhouse

Explore Blists Hill Victorian Town, the open-air museum of a Victorian Shropshire town

Visit the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, beside the furnace where Abraham Darby first smelted iron with coke in 1709

Walk the Ironbridge Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986

In 1709 Abraham Darby first smelted iron with coke at Coalbrookdale, and in 1779 Abraham Darby III built the Iron Bridge over the Severn, the world's first major bridge of cast iron, with its tollhouse at one end. The gorge has been a World Heritage Site since 1986. The Museum of Iron stands beside Darby's furnace, and Blists Hill Victorian Town, now run by the National Trust, recreates a Victorian Shropshire town.

Ironbridge Gorge: The Iron Bridge and Blists Hill

Walk the preserved stretch of Offa's Dyke at Knighton

Cross the Teme from Wales into England on foot at Knighton

Walk a few miles of the 177-mile Offa's Dyke Path

Offa's Dyke runs roughly along the England–Wales border, an earthwork up to 20m wide with its ditch and 2.4m high, named for Offa of Mercia, who ruled from 757 to 796, though parts of it may be older still. Knighton — Tref-y-clawdd, the town on the dyke — sits astride it, with the Offa's Dyke Centre in the town and a preserved section of the earthwork close by.

Knighton and Offa's Dyke: The Town on the Dyke

Walk the four baroque terraces under the castle

Look up at the giant clipped yews on the terrace faces

See the Clive Museum collection of Indian art

Powis began as a border fortress and was turned by the Herberts into a country house, with terraces cut into the rock below it in the late 17th century — one of the very few British baroque gardens left, hung with enormous clipped yews. The Clive Museum inside holds Indian treasures brought back by Clive of India and by his son Edward, later Governor of Madras, and the castle looks out over the Severn valley.

Powis Castle: The Baroque Terraces Above the Severn Valley

Walk the streets of the Black Country Living Museum, the open-air museum of the Black Country industrial village opened in 1978

Take a narrowboat trip into the Dudley Canal Tunnel from the museum

See the Tecton buildings at Dudley Zoo, the listed modernist enclosures by Berthold Lubetkin of the 1930s

Climb the ruins of Dudley Castle above the zoo

The Black Country Living Museum, opened in 1978, is an open-air museum of the industrial villages of the Black Country, with narrowboat trips into the Dudley Canal Tunnel. Beside it, Dudley Zoo keeps Berthold Lubetkin's Tecton buildings of the 1930s, listed modernist animal houses, below the ruins of Dudley Castle.

The Black Country Living Museum and Dudley

Walk through the ruins of the old cathedral, the medieval church of St Michael, destroyed on 14 November 1940, and into Basil Spence's new cathedral, consecrated in 1962, with Graham Sutherland's giant tapestry Christ in Glory

Visit the Coventry Transport Museum, home to the Thrust SSC that set the land speed record in 1997

Walk Spon Street, the medieval street where timber-framed houses were moved from elsewhere in the city

Coventry's old cathedral, the medieval church of St Michael, was destroyed in the air raid of 14 November 1940, and its ruins stand beside Basil Spence's new cathedral, consecrated in 1962, with Graham Sutherland's giant tapestry Christ in Glory. The Coventry Transport Museum holds Thrust SSC, which set the land speed record in 1997, and on Spon Street timber-framed houses moved from elsewhere in the city have been rebuilt together.