A great walk to a great pub: the George and Dragon, Much Wenlock, Shropshire

This amble around hills steeped in raucous history – the birthplace of the modern Olympics – culminates with fine beer and delicious food

The Olympic Games were reborn in Much Wenlock. It was over dinner at the Raven coaching inn in 1890 that pioneering doctor William Penny Brookes and French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin had a discussion about reviving the ancient Greek competitions.

You can still see a copy of their menu here, which featured pigeon pie, grapes and pineapples. The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens six years later. Brookes had founded the Wenlock Olympian Society decades earlier, to promote the moral, physical and intellectual benefits of exercise, and first staged games here in 1850. The original events included quoits, cricket, and cycling on penny farthings. Every July the little medieval town still holds the Wenlock Olympian Games, now in their 136th year (one of the official mascots at London 2012 was called Wenlock as a tribute).