The Welsh Marches Trivia Quiz

Answer: Clunton, Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun

Clun - well worth a visit if you are in the area - is the largest of these four villages, the other three being little more than hamlets. It has a pub called The Sun, and as for quiet - yes, except when the church bells ring!

Answer: A.E. Housman

It was A.E. Housman who, despite never actually having lived in the Marches, wrote a whole volume of verse about its northern county called "A Shropshire Lad". That line about the "blue remembered hills" is in one of them. Amazingly, "A Shropshire Lad" has never been out of print since he wrote it in 1896.

Answer: The River Wye

The main river of the Marches is the Severn, at 220 miles the UK's longest river, which rises in the Welsh Mountains at Plynlimon, crossing the Welsh-English border near Shrewsbury, through which it flows. However, it misses Hereford, running east of the Marches down through Worcestershire and turning west out into the Atlantic at the Severn Estuary.

The Wye, 133 miles long, also rises on Plynlimon, crosses the border at Hay-on-Wye and flows across the southern end of the Marches through Hereford, turning south west to join the Severn estuary just below Chepstow.

The Teme is a tributary of the Severn, crossing the border in Knighton and joining the Severn south of Ludlow; the Lugg, a tributary of the Wye which flows through Presteigne and Leominster before joining the Wye south of Hereford.

The Wye is spectacularly beautiful for much of its course.

Answer: Saint Laurence

A number of Marches churches are dedicated to Saint Mary, notably the one at Pembridge, as is Hereford Cathedral. The Northumbrian saint Alkmund is commemorated in Shrewsbury, that ancient church being the only Anglican church still open in the town centre. Clun church is dedicated to Saint George. Both Ludlow church and the one in Church Stretton are dedicated to Saint Laurence, patron Saint of barbecues. Ok, I made that last bit up, but he was martyred by being toasted on a gridiron.

Answer: Offa's Dyke

Offa's Dyke may still be walked today. It is a ditch-and-mound arrangement affording excellent views across the adjoining countryside to Wales. Though it has been eroded with the passage of time, originally it was as high as eight feet in places. Though not continuous, it can still be traced from Welshpool in the north to Chepstow in the south (the Dee estuary to the Severn estuary), a distance of 177 miles, of which over 80 miles bear clear traces of Offa's fortification - a formidable feat of engineering.

Answer: Stokesay Castle

Stokesay, the best preserved of the four castles mentioned, is situated just south of Craven Arms on the A49 (the major routeway of the Marches running north-south from Shrewsbury to Hereford). It is actually a fortified manor house rather than a true castle. Laurence of Ludlow - not to be confused with the saint, but a prosperous wool merchant - bought the derelict site (which had originally been a very minor Norman stronghold) in 1281 and built as his family home the structure which survives in the 21st century.

He applied to the King for a Licence to Crenellate (i.e. place battlements on his tower) as a mark of his status. So very nouveau-riche! Except for the Elizabethan addition of a gatehouse, Stokesay remains almost unchanged since Laurence's day.

The other three castles mentioned date much earlier and are much more obviously built to withstand attack and house a garrison.

Answer: The Devil's Chair

The Portway is an ancient track running along the spine of the Long Mynd and passing, towards the hill's southern end, a thriving Gliding Club. Cardingmill is the largest of the Mynd's batches, and the single-track road ascending from Church Stretton climbs its southern side.

The Devil's Chair, however, is a natural rock formation at the summit of the nearby Stiperstones hill: if it is covered by cloud, don't venture up there, because according to local legend, that means Old Nick is sitting on his throne!

Answer: Kington, Herefordshire

The Hawkstone Follies are worth a walk up, down, around and even through a prominence east of Shrewsbury and a golf course lies below. The small golf course at Knighton is quite high; that at Church Stretton straddles the lower reaches of the Long Mynd but the Kington one is higher than any of these.

At 1,280 feet above sea level it is the highest in England though not in Great Britain - that accolade falls to Monmouthshire golf course in Wales (1513 feet) with Leadhills in Lanarkshire, Scotland (1,500 feet) running it a close second.

Answer: Stephen Booth's Ben Cooper and Diane Fry series

Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine books are adventure stories for children similar to Enid Blyton's Famous Five, and from a similar era, but their main appeal for me as a kid was that you could find on real maps the places where the stories happened, mostly on and around the Long Mynd (though a few were set on the Sussex coast and at least one in Yorkshire). Brother Cadfael was a twelfth century monk of Saint Peter's Abbey in Shrewsbury who spent more of his time solving murders than saying matins. Phil Rickman's protagonist is also ecclesiastical, a female vicar in th fictional Herefordshire village of Ledwardine whose work in Deliverance (i.e. exorcism) always seems to involve the unearthing of criminal activity. Stephen Booth's excellent detective series is equally rural, but set in the Derbyshire Peak District.

Answer: Bishop's Castle

The present border boundary was fixed during the reign of King Henry VIII, in 1535/36, although it hasn't varied much since Offa's day in the eighth century. Bishop's Castle, known for its alternative arts and culture scene, and attractive to walkers through its proximity to the Shropshire Way, the Offa's Dyke Path and the Kerry Ridgeway, is furthest from the border, one and a half miles east of it in Shropshire. Montgomery is unsurprisingly in Montgomeryshire and is a mere one mile west of the border. Hay-on-Wye, on the fringes of the Brecon Beacons and renowned for its annual literary festival, lies immediately west of the border (marked at this point by the course of the River Wye). Knighton, known in Welsh as Tref-y-Clawdd which means the Town on the Dyke, is actually bisected by the border, though its centre and most of its residential area do lie in Wales.