NATIONAL Walking Month is just around the corner and with longer days and – hopefully – warmer weather to come, May offers the perfect chance to get out and discover the benefits of enjoying the open air whatever your level of fitness.

Herefordshire is home to some of the best treks in the country and our columnist Garth Lawson has managed to do the near impossible and select his top 10 walks from the many he has compiled to further encourage anyone thinking of starting this simple and free activity that has so many benefits.

1. Cusop

Leaving the church where Herbert Rowse Armstrong used to read the lesson, this 5 mile ramble follows the Dulas Brook on the border between England and Wales.

From the dreamy Cusop Dingle, we climb up relatively unknown but imposing Cusop Hill. Armstrong murdered his wife with arsenic to become the only solicitor to have been hanged in England.

His victim Katharine is now at peace in the churchyard watched over by seemingly immortal Domesday yew trees.

2. Vagar Hill

Each time we venture on this 5½ mile expedition over springy turfed moorland, we find the orangey-breasted stonechat.

With flicking wings and tail, he welcomes us to his domain with a pebbly song from a prominent perch in the gorse; being very adept at keeping down the insects and maggot which worry their sheep, he’s also a rare ally for the hill farmer in these remote uplands aboveDorstone in the Golden Valley.

3. Richards Castle, High Vinnals, Mary Knoll Valley

This 7 mile circuit visits commanding common and woodland. The Colonel, who won the Grand National in 1869 and 1870, was trained on the slopes of Hanway Common.

The going is mostly good to firm over gradual gradients, but there are precisely thirty stiles less than fences in the great race.

From Peeler Pond, an all-weather gallop carries us to the shady stream course of the Mary Knoll Valley.

4. Lingen

Redolent of Lady Brilliana Harley defending nearby Brampton Castle in the Civil War, this north-west nook ofHerefordshire became a battleground for locals adopting their own “siege mentality”.

The Stonewall Hill and Reeves Hill Conservation Group came about to protect the tranquillity of an area “under threat from wind power station developers”.

A brilliant 5-mile ramble features a quiet wooded valley bedecked with bluebells, high country lanes and an exhilarating return from Harley’s mountain to Lingen.

5. Knill

Knill, by Kington, is one of three locations in Herefordshire to be dubbed a “thankful village” – one of a handful of communities which escaped military fatalities in the Great War.

This 5¼ mile tour leaves the sleepy village for Garraway Hill Wood and Rushock Hill to pick up a fine section of Offa’s Dyke.

To the tinkling song of the meadow pipit, the return is a gentle contour around the village “hillock” and through the Hindwell Valley.

6. Bircher Common

A beautiful 3 mile family walk over gently sloping common land.

The fine views from the grassland between Lyngham Vallett and Oaker Coppice command Herefordshire and the Black Mountains; a spectacular setting for sheep and ponies grazing ‘neath the Mortimer Trail.

The plain below at Mortimer’s Cross was the arena for a pivotal engagement in the Wars of The Roses with close links to the history of neighbouring Croft Castle.

7. The Black Hill and Olchon Valley

A 5 mile ramble over craggy terrain with stunning views.

From the very western edge of Herefordshire we look out across wooded hills, hidden villages of rusty stone and crouching churches.

If you think of the Black Mountains as an upturned hand, the Black Hill is the thumb.

The serrated edge leading to the summit is known as “The Cat’s Back”

because from the east it looks like a cat waiting to pounce on his prey.

8. Fownhope

This rollicking 6 mile ramble takes in a coveted stretch of the River Wye - the Golden Mile - between Fownhope and Ballingham.

The return offers a fine perspective from the pastures which Tom Spring ran up and down with his butcher’s wares before he became All-England Bareknuckle champion.

This route is a good alternative to the Wye Valley Walk in these parts, which, curiously, follows shady tracks on hills three miles away from the eponymous river.

9. Bredenbury, Wacton, “Fencote Station” and Grendon Bishop

A whimsical 7 mile ramble in search of a remote, disused railway station, Thursday April 20, 2017 herefordtimes.com 37 National Walking Month Herefordshire’s own “Adlestrop”.

Francis Wigley Greswolde Greswolde-Williams, a man of many parts as well as many names, would commandeer the Bromyard and Leominster railway each year for his family to go shooting in Scotland.

Not exactly HS2, the train would stop on occasion while the guard nipped out across the fields to fetch some playing cards for his passengers.

10. Monnington Straddle and Vowchurch Common

And lastly….“Men more learned than I have vexed themselves looking for his real grave”, wrote Welsh Nationalist Owen Rhoscomyl about Owain Glyndŵr in 1905.

My route from Vowchurch Common to Monnington Straddel has not only mature woodland and views but also a sense of purpose.

A prominent overgrown mound close to Monnington Court is reputed to be the Welsh prince’s final resting-place.

But is it…..?.....?