Guests who follow the riverbank path out from the farm will, sooner or later, come across a waymark for the Simon Evans Way. It's easy to walk past without a second thought, but the name belongs to a real person, and the route follows, as closely as the modern footpath network allows, the round he walked delivering post along the Rea valley in the 1920s and 30s.
Simon Evans used his years on that round to write, and went on to gain national renown as both an author and a BBC radio broadcaster, capturing the nature and folklore of the Shropshire countryside. Five books followed, among them Round About the Crooked Steeple, named for the distinctive steeple of St Mary the Virgin in Cleobury Mortimer. A genuine love of the landscape, and of the people who lived and worked in it, runs through everything he wrote and broadcast, Reaside included.
"Reaside Farm is close against the river, narrow strips of woodland line the banks, the leafy branches interweave to make a tunnel of green. Here I may catch a glimpse of a bright blue jewel flashing for an instant over the water – the kingfisher is a shy bird."
Evans was born in 1895 in Llangadfan, Montgomeryshire, and joined the Post Office as a telegraph boy at thirteen. He served through the First World War with the 16th Cheshire Regiment, was left with permanently damaged lungs by injuries suffered in 1918, and later found city postal work hard going as a result. On holiday in Cleobury Mortimer, the story goes, he got talking to a postman grumbling about his round and offered to swap with him. From 1926 to 1935 he walked the resulting route himself, delivering post to farms scattered along the river, Reaside among them. He married Doris Aldridge in 1938 and built a house on Ron Hill, but died in 1940, aged 44, of tuberculosis almost certainly linked to his wartime injuries.
The walk that now carries his name is maintained by the Cleobury Mortimer Footpath Association and laid out as a figure of eight, meeting at Detton, with a southern loop of around 10 kilometres and a northern one of around 12. Walk the southern section and you pass directly beside the farm: the route crosses the river on the old footbridge, follows the bank, and skirts the pond by the farmhouse before heading on towards Detton Barns and the Clee Hills views beyond. It's the same stretch of riverbank our horses and donkeys now graze alongside on their track, and the same water Evans crossed and re-crossed on his round a hundred years ago.
The footpath runs through the farm and passes just a few metres from the cottages themselves, so guests can pick up the southern loop straight from their door, whether for a short stretch beside the river or the full circuit into Cleobury Mortimer and back. If you do walk into town, you're never far from a pint of Hobsons, the local ale, brewed right there in Cleobury Mortimer. Full route maps and more on Evans's life and writing are available from the Cleobury Mortimer Footpath Association at cmfa.co.uk.