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 trails of Wyre Forest National Nature Reserve, one of the largest ancient semi-natural woodlands in England

Visit the Wyre Forest Discovery Centre at Callow Hill

Walk the Dowles Brook valley through the forest to the Severn

Wyre Forest is one of the largest ancient semi-natural woodlands in England, now a National Nature Reserve. The Discovery Centre at Callow Hill is the way in, and the Dowles Brook runs down through the forest to the Severn.

Wyre Forest: Ancient Woodland Down to the Severn

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 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

Mountain bike the Follow the Dog trail at Birches Valley on Cannock Chase

Visit the German Military Cemetery on Cannock Chase, where nearly 5,000 German and Austrian dead of both world wars are buried

See the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery on the Chase

Look for fallow deer on the open heath of Cannock Chase, the smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in mainland Britain

Cannock Chase National Landscape is the smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in mainland Britain, open heath where fallow deer graze. Mountain bikers ride the Follow the Dog trail from Birches Valley, and on the Chase are two war cemeteries: the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery and the German Military Cemetery, where nearly 5,000 German and Austrian dead of both world wars were brought together after 1959.

Cannock Chase: Deer, the Follow the Dog Trail and the War Cemeteries

Tour Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton, the museum of a coal-fired pottery works with its bottle kilns

See Middleport Pottery in Burslem, the working Victorian pottery of 1888

Visit the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Hanley, with its Spitfire and pieces of the Staffordshire Hoard

Stoke-on-Trent is the Potteries, England's ceramic heartland. At Longton, the Gladstone Pottery Museum keeps a coal-fired pottery works with its bottle kilns; at Burslem, Middleport Pottery of 1888 still makes pots; the World of Wedgwood is at Barlaston; and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Hanley holds a Spitfire and pieces of the Staffordshire Hoard.