We walk. In fourteen years we have cancelled eleven public walks and every one of them was for high wind or ice rather than rain — a wet Tuesday in Shrewsbury is simply a Tuesday, and the shuts are the driest place in town because you can see about four feet of sky from most of them. Bring a coat rather than an umbrella; the passages are narrow enough that eighteen umbrellas become a genuine hazard. If we do call a walk off you will hear from us by nine that morning and you are refunded in full within two working days, without having to ask.

The Shuts & Passages walk is a mile and a quarter over ninety minutes, which is a slow pace with six proper stops, but it is not a flat mile: Wyle Cop is the steepest street in the town centre and two of the shuts have worn stone steps with no handrail. We can run the whole route avoiding every step for wheelchair and pushchair users — it adds about two hundred yards and misses one stop, and you get a better view of the river in exchange. Tell Isla when you book and she will confirm the adjusted route rather than promise and hope. Darwin’s Shrewsbury is flatter throughout. The 1403 walk involves uneven churchyard ground at Battlefield and we say so plainly to anyone who asks.

For most of the year you can turn up at The Square ten minutes before and pay on the pavement — we deliberately hold four places on every public walk for exactly that. In August, over both half-terms and on the first Saturday of the month when the 1403 walk runs, book: those fill four or five days out and we cap every public walk at eighteen so the person at the back can actually hear. Booking takes a minute, needs no account, and the confirmation includes the meeting point with a photograph of it, because "by the statue" means less than you would think to somebody who has never been.

Very. Under-fives go free on every walk and under-sixteens pay the concession rate. The Shuts walk works well from about seven upward — it is short, it is full of narrow passages that are inherently interesting to a child, and Peg has a genuinely good story about a plague pit. The 1403 walk is the one children remember, mostly because Owen brings a longbow replica and lets them try to draw it, which almost nobody under fourteen can. We would gently steer you away from Darwin’s Shrewsbury with a young child: it is two hours and quite a lot of it is standing still outside buildings.

It is the national guiding qualification — around two years of study, regional accreditation, examined on site and in writing, and renewed with continuing training. It is why we can take groups inside the abbey and into Battlefield church when other guides cannot, and it is the difference between someone who has read about the town and someone who has been examined on it. Peg and Owen are both Blue Badge for the Heart of England region. Isla is working toward hers and currently holds the Shropshire county accreditation, which we say on this page rather than leaving you to assume.

A private walk is £180 for up to twenty people, on any of our routes and any date we are free, and you can move the start time to suit a lunch booking. We do a lot of these for birthdays, for wedding parties on the Friday, and for firms bringing new staff into the town. We will also build something from scratch if you have a subject — we have done the Civil War siege, the flood defences, the Victorian shopfronts and, twice, an entire walk about drains, which was more popular than any of us expected. Give us a fortnight for a bespoke route because it means a day in the archives, and that day is included in the price.

Isla runs the schools programme and it is the part of this business we are proudest of. A half-day is £240 for up to thirty-two pupils with two guides, which works out at seven pounds fifty a child, and it comes with a pre-visit pack of copied documents your class can actually handle. Key Stage 2 does the town and the Norman castle; Key Stage 3 does 1403 and the battle; A-level history groups do a session in the archives with real sources under supervision. We have worked with nineteen Shropshire schools and we will always find a way to make the price work for a school that cannot find £240.

Because that is what it costs to pay a qualified guide properly for two hours of work, one hour of preparation and the fourteen years of reading behind it. There is no head office and no commission: you are paying three people who live here. Around a fifth of every ticket goes back into research — archive fees, photographic copies, and the two days a month Peg still spends in the county record office, which is where the new material on every walk comes from. We put our prices on this page rather than making you enquire, and they have risen twice since 2011.