‘Switzerland without the avalanches and wolves.’ That was how the Shropshire Hills, and the market town of Church Stretton at its heart, were once promoted. The tagline was at least half right: as I strolled through nearby Little Stretton on a summer evening, the soundtrack was of baaing sheep rather than the howling of anything lupine.
Quiet, rural, lowly populated Shropshire was a tourism ‘secret’ until recreation-seeking Victorians discovered it from the mid-19th century.
Subsequently, the hills became a place
