Offa's Dyke (S) Summary

Offa's Dyke - South
By Mark Walford Epilogue Prev

There's no doubt about it — time really does fly. It's already a month since the walk and I have barely unpacked. The physical reminders are fading: a couple of toenails have turned a Gothic black, and every so often the dodgy knee delivers a small twinge that conjures, with surprising accuracy, the memory of a particular gradient lurking behind a particular stile somewhere in Monmouthshire. These will pass. What remains are the photographs, the memories, and this set of scribblings to look back on in the years ahead.
I missed the discomfort and exertion of it almost immediately — specifically, the moment I put a business suit back on and became a Project Manager again. I have a new screensaver on my laptop: a view down the sublime valley of Radnor, taken as we descended from Bradnor Hill on the final afternoon. I have spent many moments staring at it as phones ring and keyboards rattle all around me, in the particular wistful way of a man who knows exactly where he would rather be.
As a route I cannot recommend Offa's Dyke enough. It has everything: scenery of the mouth-watering variety, well-maintained paths, friendly hospitality at every stop, gaunt ruins at regular intervals, and of course all those hills. There is, it has to be said, a great deal of upping and downing involved. It is hard work — but the climbing is inseparable from the reward. Without the effort, the views would be simply views. With it, they become something earned, and that changes how they feel.
It is not, for all that, a particularly punishing trail. Nothing like as demanding as the Kintyre Way, for instance, and most averagely fit people will find it entirely manageable. If you need further encouragement, take it from the octogenarian Australian we met on Hergest Ridge, walking the complete path with a defibrillator in a companion's pack and a heart condition he was declining to let have the final word. Grab a pack, pull on some boots, and walk it.
I will be back for Part Two — swearing at the pointless climbing of pointless hills, forcing my soft city feet back into outdoor shoes, accumulating the inevitable blisters and knotted leg muscles that will remind me, as they always do, that I really ought to be fitter, and from which I will draw the usual conclusion of doing nothing about it. I will be lagging behind my fellow walkers for most of the time, as is both traditional and appropriate.
But when the day is done and the beer is ordered and we rest our tired bodies in whatever pub has been good enough to receive us — the miles walked are the same for all of us. And more importantly, they are happily shared.
That, in the end, is the point of all of it.

Mark.

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Offa's Dyke (S) Day 6

Offa's Dyke - South

By Mark Walford Day Six Route: Kington to Knighton Distance: 13.5m (22km) Elevation: 541ft (165m) to 1,299ft (396m) Climbing (ascent and descent): 2,448ft (746m) and 2,421ft (738m) Prev      Next

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There's no such thing as free parking ....

The final day of the walk dawned bright and sunny, which felt like the appropriate weather for a conclusion and which the Met Office had not, to be fair, specifically promised. The Stone Trolls arrived under my window at half past six, right on schedule. I lay listening to their hammering and merry cursing for a few minutes with something approaching affection. I would, in a strange way, miss them.
Foot therapy this morning was a perfunctory affair — a couple of plasters, the faithful crepe bandage, and a decision not to look too closely at the left big toe nail, which had developed, over six days of sustained walking, into something I can only describe as pork scratchings and will not describe further. I covered it with a plaster and moved on.
Colin, Jo, and I navigated the small kitchen of Brock Cottage with the practiced ease of people who have shared a small space for a week and know each other's moves. Jo offered porridge. I accepted, which surprised me as much as him — I have never been a fan of porridge and have no clear explanation for why I said yes. Jo's preparation was impeccable. The porridge itself was entirely fine. I ate it with the forced enthusiasm of a man honouring a commitment and hoped nobody noticed.
Bod arrived, punctual as ever. Jo rode with me as always; Colin went with Bod. I rarely see Jo except on these walks, which is one of the quiet pleasures of a week like this — the long car journeys that give you the time to talk properly, to cover ground you never manage at family gatherings or over a quick pint. He has a perceptive and often surprising view on most things, and our conversations ranged widely enough that the drives always passed quickly.
We found the Offa's Dyke visitor centre in Knighton without much difficulty — a pleasant modern building of local Welsh slate, open and unhurried. Colin and I went in. I surveyed the merchandise — the sweatshirts, hoodies, and t-shirts — and made a note of what I would be purchasing after next year's northern section. Colin, meanwhile, had committed to buying the guidebook for that section and flinched visibly at the price: twelve pounds and change.
We asked whether we could leave a car there for the day. The woman behind the counter confirmed that parking was free, and indicated a donation box near the door. Colin looked at his receipt. "This was our donation," he muttered, pocketing the guidebook.
Outside, he discovered it had been signed by its authors. This probably accounted for the price. He seemed somewhat reconciled.

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In Kington town, falling in love with a Bridgitt, Offa's Dyke reunited ....

We drove to Kington and shouldered our packs for the last time. Kington is one of those pleasant old market towns that still knows what it is — haphazard town planning, varied architecture, civic pride evident in the tidy streets and smart shopfronts, and a high street that has somehow retained its independent businesses rather than surrendering them entirely to the chain store advance. Titleys the hardware store. A proper butcher. The occasional anomaly that reminds you high streets used to be more interesting than they currently are in most places.

Kington

Colin was on camera duty and I could hear him delivering a commentary about the walk out of town — the prospect of climbing, the general character of what lay ahead — when he suddenly said: "Oh — and there it is then."
I had been looking at a row of red brick cottages. I looked up. Directly across the road from the town boundary, apparently positioned there for maximum psychological effect, was a large hill.
This was Bradnor Green, the approach to Bradnor Hill, and it had clearly been waiting.
We started up. The knees registered their objections through the established channels. Bradnor Hill tops out at 1,239 feet, which qualifies it, in the classification system that these things apparently have, as a Bridgett. To qualify as a Bridgett a hill must fail to meet the criteria of any other recognised classification and be somewhere worth walking to — which makes it sound like an also-ran, and I felt this was unfair on Bradnor. It has, for one thing, the highest golf course in England on its slopes, which you would think might earn it an honorary promotion. By the time I laboured up the final section and emerged onto a wide green plateau of lush grass and browsing sheep, I had mentally reclassified the word Bridgett using a term that suggested it had no father, and then immediately revised my opinion as the summit opened up around me. On a morning like this one, Bradnor Hill was a delight — broad, grassy, unhurried, with the sun on it and long views back into Herefordshire including a last retrospective glimpse of Hatterall ridge, made vague and insignificant by distance. I fell rather in love with it and apologised privately for what I had called it on the way up.

Bradnor Hill and the dyke regained

From Bradnor we passed onto its conjoined twin, Rushock Hill, and it was here that we were reunited with Offa's Dyke itself — last encountered near Tintern on the first morning, five days and many miles ago. Out here on open ground it was a far more legible structure: an impressive earthwork running over the spine of the hill, twelve hundred years old and still unmistakably deliberate, a spoil heap of considerable ambition raised along the western boundary of a kingdom that no longer exists. We rested beside it for a while, pleased to be back in its company.
I had time, on the ascent of Bradnor, to observe the walking styles of my companions with the detached interest of someone who is moving slowly enough to notice things. Bod: a slow, rolling stride of consistent efficiency, the same whether climbing or descending, covering ground without apparent effort or urgency — the gait of a man who has made an arrangement with distance and intends to keep it. Jo: ambling, slightly built, baseball cap on backwards, hands often in pockets, never visibly tired, giving the impression of someone who could continue indefinitely without particularly minding either way. Colin: upright, balanced, economical — the textbook hiker's stride, nothing wasted. And myself: busier, longer strides, running on a battery that recharged endlessly on flat terrain but drained rapidly on inclines. Even at my fittest this profile has never changed. I have thought about this for years and have no satisfactory explanation.

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Paradise found, oxygen lost ....

The route along the top of the dyke was slightly anti-climactic — the earthwork riddled with rabbit workings, the surface uneven and treacherous underfoot, every step a small negotiation with one's ankles. We soon left it and turned eastward along the brow of Herrock Hill, rounded a bend, and stopped. In a week full of awesome vistas the view down into the East Radnor valley, valley was, in my opinion, the finest of all — and this on a week that had included Hatterrall Ridge and Hergest Ridge at their best. A wide green bowl of a valley, surrounded on all sides by gentle hills, the landscape flowing away into the distance in the way that only Welsh countryside at its most generous manages. Perfect weather for a perfect view. Colin and I stood and stared for rather a long time and lost Jo and Bod in the process, who had walked on, not realising we had stopped to commune with Radnor.
We pressed on and found ourselves briefly lost — a gate into dense woodland ahead firmly padlocked and marked Private, no other obvious route forward except a sheep track dropping twenty feet or more to the left at a gradient that deserved more respect than I gave it. I went first, took three steps, and the ground made its decision. I went down on my backside and stayed there all the way to the bottom, arriving with the momentum and grace of a sack of potatoes. No damage done, beyond a questionable brown stain on the seat of my shorts that remained for the rest of the day.

East Radnor Valley

Colin filmed this with the dedicated attention of a man who recognises a document worth keeping. He then had to descend the same slope himself, camera still running, and managed it in a manner that was not precisely controlled but did at least keep him upright for most of the journey.
We walked under trees and along a trail sheltered in the lee of Herrock Hill, which, given the circumstances, offered a compensatory set of views. Eventually a gravel path, then a farm track, then a farmyard where Bod and Jo stood waiting with maps and the patient expressions of people who have been here for a while.
A pleasant B-road, — genuinely pleasant, the kind of road walking that feels like a reward rather than a connecting passage — past several attractive bed and breakfast properties, before the route inevitably peeled off across country again and up through woodland on Evenjobb Hill, which added flights of wooden steps to the usual formula. Hard going in the afternoon sun. At the top of the steepest section, a short sharp track ran up to a metal gate and a meadow beyond, and I looked at it and made a decision I immediately regretted.
I ran.
Not a jog — a proper, committed run, straight up the gradient, very nearly making contact with Jo who was walking it at a sensible pace. I made the gate, went through it, and paid for the optimism almost immediately. Anaerobia descended with the thoroughness of something that had been lying in wait for me to arrive. The feeling, for a considerable interval, was of trying to breathe through a very small opening in something solid. Colin had been filming throughout. The resulting footage is, by his account, fascinating.

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A lunchtime bite, welsh cowboys, ploughing up Furrow Hill ....

Thankfully lunch was called after we had crested the field, which was merciful. We discovered in passing that the boundary fence was electrified, which was information Colin had already received through the fence itself. We settled in brilliant sunshine on the hillside, the countryside spread out below us for miles, and ate in the comfortable silence of people who have been in each other's company long enough not to need to fill it.
I lay back and covered my face with my hat. I dozed. Something bit me in the small of my back with a precision and malice that suggested purpose rather than accident, raising a lump that itched for days. I chose not to investigate.
Colin got to his feet, announced something about going ahead to film, and departed. We allowed ourselves another five minutes before following, cresting a small hill to find precisely the kind of tussocky, uneven ground that we had collectively identified as our least favourite terrain of the week. The menu of ailments, which had been largely in abeyance thanks to the knee support applied before leaving Kington, seized the opportunity to offer a dessert course: ankle twisters, served generously and at irregular intervals.
Colin reappeared from a hedgerow with the camera trained on us and filmed our progress across the entire length of the field with the patient thoroughness of a documentarian who has identified his subject and is not going to blink first.
Bod and I then missed the acorn sign and walked a respectable distance up the wrong lane before the others called us back. The sign pointed across more fields and up toward another Bridgett — Hawthorn Hill, which we apparently descended without having climbed, in the specific manner that Offa's Dyke uses to deposit you at the bottom of a valley before the next ascent. The descent offered Jo a moment of inspiration.
"I can't walk down this," he announced. "My knees are going. I'm going to jog."
And with that he set off — initially an undignified arrangement of limbs, then, as the physics sorted themselves out, a reasonable approximation of running. Colin, observing this, was apparently infected by the same impulse.
"Look at me — I'm jogging too!" he announced, and careered past me down the hill after Jo's rapidly diminishing figure.
I watched them go. I walked down. We all arrived at the valley floor at roughly similar times, which tells you something about jogging on hills, though I am not entirely sure what.

The last hill of the week was Furrow Hill — a proper hill, an honest hill, approached via a gravel track past a small cluster of cottages at Rhos-y-meirch and continuing upward through familiar high sheep pasture. As we climbed, a commotion from a meadow to the right drew our attention. A man — a farmer, presumably — was conducting some form of livestock management in a manner that owed more to the American West than to the Welsh Marches.
"Heeeaaahhh, geddon there, haa haa!"
We listened.
"Yaaarrrhh yarrrhhh, hey — HEYYY!"
"He's a-roundin’ up those ornery steers for branding, hyuk," I offered, in a reasonable approximation of a drawl.
Bod laughed. Then added: "We're taking the piss, but the poor bloke's probably got his leg trapped in a baler and he's calling for help."
We moved on, taking our guilt with us.
Furrow Hill was a strength-sapper of the slow, honest variety — not steep enough to be dramatic, just long enough to make itself felt. Even Bod, whose foot had been troubling him all week, took rest stops. But the summit, when it came, was worth every one of them: a wide plateau of rolling grassland, clumps of lonely trees standing at intervals against the sky, views as good as anything the week had offered. Similar in character to Bradnor Hill but larger and wilder, with the wind moving through the long grass and the kind of open space that makes you understand why people walk long distances to find it.
I made the final yards up to where the others were waiting.
"Have you seen my guidebook?" Colin called down.
I had not.
"Must have worked its way out on the path somewhere," he said, with the deflated air of a man contemplating a return trip.
"Just like my lungs," I said.
It was, fortunately, the dog-eared current-week copy, not the autographed northerly guide purchased that morning in Knighton.

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A wind down into Knighton, the missing miles explained, a Plan B ....

The crest of Furrow Hill was generous with us — a wide prairie of grass and gorse, sheep grazing in all directions, the cool clean air of altitude after the warmth of the climb. A small stand of evergreens clustered at the top of one rise, incongruous against the open grassland around them, clinging on against the eastern wind and the south-westerly gales with the stubbornness of things that have decided to be there regardless of what the weather thinks. We turned eastward and upward to a crest where the town of Presteigne

On top of Furrow Hill

lay below, shadows gathering in the valley as the afternoon tipped toward evening. The sun was lowering, turning the grassland to rust and ochre, lengthening the shadows of the sheep, cooling the air with that particular September gentleness that makes you want the day to last a little longer than it will.
We began the descent from Furrow Hill, picking up Offa's Dyke once more for a last encounter with its lumpy, unpredictable surface. As Colin and I passed through a gate into the final steep meadow, the section of dyke running alongside it was the most impressive we had seen all week — twenty feet from ditch to crown, fenced off from walkers' feet, solid and deliberate, looking as though it had been raised recently rather than twelve centuries ago. We stood and looked at it for a moment. It deserved a moment.
Woodland followed, and through the trees the sounds of an ordinary evening: families, dogs, the distant percussion of a pitch-and-putt course. Knighton was close. The path tipped steeply downward through trees — roots and loose stones offering one final reminder that the walk hadn't entirely finished with us — and deposited us onto a road that led along and then down into the town itself.
We walked along Knighton's high street, past a pub flying Welsh flags, and arrived at the Offa's Dyke visitor centre.
Outside, a signpost pointed in both directions along Offa's Dyke. Northward — next year's walk — it read 97 miles. Southward — the way we had come — it read 80 miles. We looked at it for a moment.
"That's where the missing miles went," said Colin.

Knighton and journey's end

We had assumed Knighton sat at the exact midpoint of the route, which we had translated into roughly ninety miles each way. It doesn't. The southern section is eighty miles, the northern ninety-seven. The ten miles we had been puzzling over for days simply didn't exist.
Bod considered this with the equanimity of a man who has carried a GPS all week.
"We've probably walked more than ninety anyway taking all the wrong turns into account."
He was almost certainly right.
We stripped off our gear, congratulated each other on a week completed, and drove back toward Ross-on-Wye via Kington, in the mood that follows the end of a long walk — that particular combination of physical satisfaction and the first small sadness of something being over.
The plan for next year took shape as we drove. The section immediately north of Knighton — Knighton to Brompton, fifteen miles — was reputedly the most gruelling single day on the entire route. Doing it as the opening day of a full week would be a brutal introduction. We decided to return in May, walk it as a standalone section, and return to Brompton in September to complete the northern half properly. Sensible logistics. Sound reasoning. The kind of plan that sounds entirely achievable over a car journey in late September, when the hills are behind you and the pub is ahead.

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Celebration: The Man O' Ross Pub, Ross-On-Wye ....

The Man of Ross received us with the warmth of a pub that has been doing this for a long time and knows exactly what returning walkers need. An excellent meal, several rounds of the inn's finest ale, and the gradual unwinding of six days of effort and decision and landscape. Jo, who keeps reasonable hours even after a week of unreasonable walking, took a taxi back to Brock Cottage after a couple of pints, which was entirely sensible and which the rest of us chose not to emulate.
The landlord joined us at some point in the evening and showed no inclination to hurry us along. Bod, Colin, and I sat and let the night develop at its own pace. Back at the cottage, Colin and I took a last beer out into the garden and sat with it under the stars. The garden was quiet. The sky was clear. Somewhere across the fields the hills we had walked over were dark shapes against the night, doing whatever hills do when no one is watching them.
We always feel the same after a long walk ends — a genuine achievement settled alongside a genuine reluctance to let it go. In a few days it would be offices and deadlines and the ordinary accumulation of things that fill a working life. The September light and the open ridges and the easy company of these particular people would start to seem further away than they were. The winter would arrive and make it seem further still.
But we would be back in May.
I fell into bed at three in the morning, undisturbed by the thought of an early start, the Stone Trolls silent for once, and slept without dreaming.

See Route on ......

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Offa's Dyke (S) Day 5

Offa's Dyke - South

By Mark Walford Day Five Route: Hay-On-Wye to Kington Distance: 14.5m (23.5km) Elevation: 240ft (73m) to 1,371ft (418m) Climbing (ascent and descent): 2,231ft (680m) and 1,946ft (593m) Prev      Next

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The second hand book capital of the UK ....

The workmen returned at half past six with undiminished enthusiasm, and I lay listening to them for a few minutes before accepting that this was simply how the week had decided to begin each day. Foot therapy was concluded quickly — I was running out of materials. Colin had laughed, early in the week, at the pile of dressings and unctions arranged on top of my bathroom cabinet. That pile was now almost gone, deployed in the service of keeping me ambulatory. The crepe bandage around the left foot had become so routine it felt odd not to be wearing it. I wound it on and went downstairs.
It was a glorious morning. Barely a cloud anywhere, the trees and hedgerows wearing their late summer colours with the particular confidence of something about to change — the first yellows of autumn showing through the green, the light already carrying that September quality of being slightly more considered than August's.
We left a car at the small market town of Kington and hopped back to Hay-on-Wye to begin the day. The question of how far we would be walking remained, as it had all week, somewhat approximate. Hergest Ridge was out there somewhere. Everything else was open to negotiation. Estimates ranged from eleven to sixteen miles, which is an enigma of a range and says something about the Offa's Dyke's relationship with predictability.
I had been to Hay-On-Wye before; a day walk in April with Colin.

Window shopping in Hay-On-Wye

It is best known as the second-hand book capital of the UK — over thirty bookshops, a literary festival
that has run since 1988 and now draws crowds of eighty thousand over ten days, and a reputation for bibliographic abundance that far exceeds what its size would suggest. The town's modern identity owes a great deal to one Richard George William Pitt Booth who in 1977 declared Hay an independent kingdom — not a genuine attempt at sovereignty but an inspired publicity stunt that put the town on the map in a way that no amount of sensible marketing ever could. The Normans had liked it too, building two castles and staying for several centuries, though their reasons were rather less literary.
We walked out of Hay past the Fudge Factory — located, with a certain municipal carelessness, directly next to the public toilets — then through the market square with its handsome clock tower and past the bookshops lining the streets in cheerful abundance, before crossing the Wye on a road bridge. Here, as in Monmouth a few days before, a crowd had gathered on the parapet to watch outdoor pursuits on the river below. Not raft racing this time — abseiling. A party of college students were being lowered over the edge toward the water. From above, the expressions on the faces of those still waiting their turn suggested that enthusiasm for the exercise was unevenly distributed.

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Border crossings, a long walk on Little Mountain ....

Beyond Hay we moved through fields of crops in warm sunshine, following the river briefly before striking north. Bod and Jo forged ahead — as is the natural order — leaving Colin and me to amble along in their wake, talking of this and that. We skirted a very large field and watched, at some distance, two walkers who appeared to be engaged in a navigational discussion of some duration. They would set off in one direction, stop, confer, return, try another direction, stop again. There was something almost ant-like in their aimless meanderings. They covered a considerable amount of ground without making any obvious progress.
Bod, ahead of us, was not immune to this condition himself. In a rare lapse he had walked past the white acorn sign, and we had to whistle and call them back. Colin and I received this with more satisfaction than was probably merited.
The path led into woodland and we began to climb. The route wound through pleasant rural byways — hedgerows, meadows, soft rolling hills — the very picture of the English countryside, except that it was Wales. Or possibly England. The place names along this stretch refused to commit. English-sounding names — Newchurch, Old Radnor, Clyro — sat alongside Welsh ones — Gilfach-yr-heol, Dysgwylfa, Llwyngwilliam — and the border itself, never marked and rarely obvious, crossed and recrossed the path with the casual indifference of something that has never particularly cared which side it was on.
The map mentioned Little Mountain, and we had been hoping, without great conviction, to avoid it. The name was the problem. *Little Mountain* had a quality of understatement that experience had taught us to treat with suspicion. Something called a Slight Hillock or an Average Knoll could be approached with equanimity. Little Mountain suggested rocky outcrops, scrambling, and exposure. In the event it introduced itself through secretive and rather lovely woodland — uphill, certainly, but nothing particularly demanding — which was either reassuring or ominous, depending on whether you believed the path was being kind or merely building up to something. The menu of ailments arrived while I was under the trees, which felt unfair given the agreeable surroundings. Today's offering was an innovation: blisters under the toes — bubble toes, I christened them — joining knee grumble as the dish of the day and nudging freshly rubbed heel into the position of supporting act. I stopped, found my knee support in the pack, wound it on, and felt the benefit almost immediately. I was now wearing what amounted to a small medical facility on my lower body, but I was walking in something approaching comfort, which was the point.
The wooded path steepened and then delivered us onto high open ground, the horizon filled with rolling hills in all directions. We stopped for water and Bod studied the map with the focused attention of a man who suspects the news is not entirely good.
To the north, a long low ridge lay on the horizon. A very long, very distant ridge.
"If that's Hergest," said Bod, "we are in deep shit."
He turned to Colin with the quiet satisfaction of a man who has located something he was looking for.
"There — see? Your missing miles. All laid out before you!"
It was not, as it turned out, Hergest Ridge. The day's route continued roughly parallel to it. The relief was real but brief, because the path continued upward along the flank of Little Mountain via a narrow snaggled track that ran diagonally across a series of fields, sloping right to left in a way that loaded the ankles with an unfamiliar strain. It was, as Bod put it, looking up at the wide grassland of the summit, exactly the sort of place where Julie Andrews was about to appear over the brow of the hill, accompanied by a gaggle of singing Von Trapps.

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Kites on high, a man outstanding in his field ....

The summit of Little Mountain offered a 360-degree panorama of hills, valleys, and distant mountains and seemed an entirely reasonable place to stop for lunch. We sprawled on warm turf beside a gate in a farm track. Large birds were working the thermals above us.
Colin and Jo watched them.
"Kites?" asked Jo, with the cautious optimism of someone who has asked this question several times during the week.
Colin watched carefully. "Yes," he said. "Yes — those are kites."
And there they were. Red Kites — the first all week — large and unhurried, their distinctive forked tails and red/white markings unmistakeable against the blue sky. They were sailing in long easy circles above us as though they had all the time available and were in no particular hurry to do anything with it. We watched them for a while without saying much. Some things warrant the silence.
The rumble of a tractor coming uphill drew our attention. It chugged into view, heading for the gated field beside us. I got up to open the gate, which seemed the neighbourly thing to do, but the farmer climbed down and took over the job with the diplomatic efficiency of a man who has seen what city people do with farm gates and prefers not to risk it. He was getting on in years but had the easy physical competence of someone who has been doing physical things all his life and sees no reason to stop. He enthused about the weather, mentioned cutting grass for winter feed, and said various other things punctuated by a comfortable frequency of *Aye*s.
He drove the tractor through, parked it, and disappeared back down the hill. Minutes later he returned — with the business end of a combine harvester. We watched with considerable interest as he threaded the machine through the gateway and began the process of coupling it to the section he had brought up on the tractor. It required a degree of precision and patience that was impressive to observe. Bod and I had a brief disagreement about the purpose of the exercise — I thought he had mentioned cutting grass, Bod maintained that combine harvesters were not, in general, used for grass — but we agreed that whatever was about to be chopped down in that field, the farmer was going to do it with skill.

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If you feel a little glum; to Hergest Ridge you should come, The Octagenerian Aussie ....

After lunch we followed the farm track down to the valley floor, where the farmhouse stood surrounded by mature trees with a brook chattering past its front door — idyllic in the way that remote Welsh farms are idyllic when you are passing through them in September sunshine. Less idyllic, I imagined, at seven in the morning on a January day when the cattle need tending and the tracks are frozen. The old farmer probably had a harder life than the landscape suggested, though he gave no indication of minding.

Bod watches cloud shadows on the hills

We descended to the valley bottom — the deepest point of the day's topography, which meant only one thing — and Offa's Dyke confirmed expectations by immediately heading upward again, this time toward the crown of Dysgwylfa Hill. I muttered my standard objections to this arrangement and then reminded myself, not for the first time on this walk, that in a few days I would be back at a desk meeting deadlines, and that I would think about these hills and the sun on my face and wish myself back here. It is a reliable mechanism and it works, most of the time.
Hergest Ridge appeared as we rounded the corner of Dysgwylfa — and with it, an immediate and entirely unexpected lift of the spirits. I knew it mainly from Mike Oldfield's 1974 album of the same name — one of those places that exists in the imagination before it exists in the flesh, associated with a particular quality of sound and atmosphere. I had, for reasons I could not clearly account for, always pictured it somewhere in the West Country. Finding it here, on our map, within walking distance, felt like a small and rather pleasing surprise. The ridge itself delivered from the first glimpse. A great crescent of a hill, smooth and whale-backed, rising over four hundred metres from the surrounding countryside — its eastern flank covered in fields and hedgerows almost to the summit, the whole thing presenting as a green counterpane of squares and woodland and the white dots of grazing sheep. It was a stop-and-stare moment of the first order. I stopped. I stared.
We descended to the village of Gladestry first — a quiet, self-contained sort of place, the kind that makes you entertain, briefly, the fantasy of buying property and growing vegetables — then found the path up the hill. The climb was enclosed by trees at first and then opened onto grassland as we gained height. It was steady rather than severe, which did not prevent me from stopping at intervals to catch my breath, during one of which I became aware of a man framing me in his camera. I am now preserved in a stranger's photograph collection somewhere in the world: a sweating, open-mouthed figure in a floppy hat, imposed against the scenic backdrop of the Welsh Marches. I hope it is a good photograph. I have no illusions about my contribution to it.
The view from the top of Hergest Ridge was the finest of the week.
I say this having climbed Hatterrall twice and stood on its summit in both cloud and weak sunshine. Hergest was different — the weather softer and more settled, the visibility almost unlimited, the hills rolling away in all directions with a generosity that seemed almost excessive. To the west the great valley of Radnor opened out in a way that made you want to take to the air and fly across it.

On Hergest Ridge

Kites wheeled overhead — they were everywhere now, having been so elusive for the first four days. The breeze hissed through the long grass and made a creditable attempt to remove my hat.
I panned the video camera through nearly 180 degrees, starting and ending at the setting sun. Bod pointed out the direction of tomorrow's walking and I received this information with the tired philosophical acceptance of a man who has learned not to look too far ahead.
Colin and I walked together on the descent and agreed, fairly extensively, on how fortunate we were to be there. It is not the sort of conversation one has often enough, and a long day on a high ridge is exactly the right occasion for it.
The descent followed a long track toward Kington, and here we caught up with Bod and Jo, who were standing at a gate talking to three other walkers. This was unusual enough in Bod's case to register before we were close enough to recognise the others. It was the Australians — last seen at the Half Moon in Llanthony, now some distance further along the path and entirely uncrushed by the experience.
Colin and I fell in with one of them as the group moved along the metalled track toward Kington. We talked easily — the particular ease of people who have been doing the same thing in the same landscape and have certain experiences in common. I had taken them all to be somewhere in their fifties. When he mentioned in passing that he was well into his sixties I adjusted. When he gestured to one of the others and mentioned, with the casual delivery of something that is simply true, that he was eighty-two, I stopped walking for a moment.
Eighty-two. Walking Offa's Dyke. The complete route, in one go, two weeks.
There was, apparently, some concern about him. He had been mentioning chest pains on the recent climbs — he had a cardiac condition, and a defibrillator was stashed in one of the packs. I suggested, as diplomatically as I could, that this placed a considerable weight of responsibility on his companions.
The Australian shrugged, with the equanimity of someone who has given this a great deal of thought.
"You know how stubborn people get. He'd rather peg out in a place like this than in some hospital bed, and we support him in that. If it happens, it happens. He keeps saying it's indigestion, but that's what they all say, isn't it?" A pause. "I do think he's pushing his luck a bit."
Colin mentioned that the most demanding section of the whole path was coming up shortly — just after Knighton. The Australian nodded and smiled with the calm of a man who already knows this and has made his arrangements.
"Yeah," he said. "I know."

---

Recovery: Fish and chips at Brock Cottage ....

We parted company at the edge of Kington knowing it was unlikely we would meet them again. We wished them well. I hope the defibrillator remained in the pack.
We found our car and began the familiar process of converting ourselves from walkers back into ordinary people — the slow, stiff-legged transition that takes a few minutes and the removal of several layers of equipment. A middle-aged American man approached us from the pavement.
"Y'all from round here?"
He was looking for somewhere to eat. We pointed him toward several inns and restaurants we had passed on the way in. He was joined by his wife and they walked off down the high street together. They did not look like people who had arrived in Kington by any route involving walking, which left their presence in this particular out-of-the-way corner of the Welsh Marches as one of the day's minor mysteries. It would have been rude to ask.
Fish and chips in Ross-on-Wye, eaten at Colin's cottage — a decision that required a walk into town that was, of course, uphill. Colin led the way to his preferred chippy with the proprietary confidence of a man who has conducted this particular research thoroughly. We carried the parcels back to Brock Cottage, ate them, and allowed ourselves to be horizontal.
My knees hurt.
England beat Croatia 5-1.
I went to bed happy.

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Offa's Dyke (S) Day 4

Offa's Dyke - South

By Mark Walford Day Four Route: Llanthony Priory to Hay-On-Wye Distance: 13m (21km) Elevation: 318ft (97m) to 2,303ft (702m) Climbing (ascent and descent): 1,621ft (494m) and 2,090ft (637m) Prev      Next

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Wings on my feet, lowering skies, a case of a leaky bladder ....

The workmen were back at half past six, applying hammers to stone with the focused enthusiasm of men who have somewhere to be and consider sleep a personal failing in others. I lay staring at the ceiling for thirty minutes, then rolled out of bed and into the shower with the resignation of someone who has accepted that this is simply how mornings work now.
The foot therapy this morning required extra care and I laid out the materials with the methodical attention of a field surgeon preparing for something complicated. Antiseptic swab first, then two ordinary plasters, then Compeed, then a crepe bandage wound around the foot and secured with what I can only describe as an unreasonable quantity of Micropore tape. The result was a foot that was well padded, thoroughly protected, and looked, from the ankle down, like a minor outbreak of gout. I stood up, took a few experimental steps.
Not so much as a wince.
Then I picked up the new shoes.
I had been calling them trainers, but on reflection that was underselling them — they were proper walking shoes, robustly made with a decent grip on the sole, bought in a sale at a local garden centre with no particular ambition beyond casual use. I slipped them on, stood up, and took a few steps toward the door.
The difference was immediate and almost comic. My feet, which had spent three days being slowly destroyed by boots that had apparently taken a personal dislike to me, now felt as though they were resting on something that actively wished them well. Light, comfortable, forgiving. I bounced out to the car with the incredulous energy of a man who has recently remembered what it feels like not to be in pain. I felt like throwing my arms in the air.
They might not survive a hundred miles. They would absolutely see me to Knighton.
The Met Office had promised a bright and fine day. The skies, when we stepped outside, were the colour of old pewter from one horizon to the other. We left one car at Hay-On-Wye and took the winding road south through the Vale of Ewyas toward Llanthony, the long wall of Hatterrall Ridge keeping us company to the right. To the south the land fell away into drizzle-washed haze. The road narrowed as we neared the priory until it was barely wide enough for one vehicle, hemmed in by hedgerows in the

Llanthony Priory

Cornish manner, requiring a series of reversals into passing places whenever something came the other way.
The three Australians from the previous evening appeared around a bend, already well into their day, shrouded in Gore-Tex and moving with the purposeful efficiency of long-distance walkers who have stopped being surprised by anything. I wound the window down and threw them a greeting. They responded pleasantly but with no sign of recognition. We were, at this point, simply four more people in a car on a narrow Welsh road. Fair enough.
The cloud was doing things to the summit of Hatterrall — rolling across it in slow grey waves, obscuring the top at intervals and then releasing it again. Some discussion took place about whether to use the ridge or take the valley road to Hay. Colin wanted the ridge. I wanted the ridge too, with certain reservations involving my knees and the residual memory of yesterday's descent. I said nothing and resolved to go along with whatever was decided.
We parked near the priory. I opened the tailgate to retrieve my rucksack and found it soaking wet.
Investigation revealed the cause: the CamelPak tube had been left in the unlocked position overnight, and the bag had quietly drained itself under its own pressure. I had perhaps a cupful remaining. I had spare water bottles, but not enough to feel comfortable about a full day on the ridge, so I unclipped the CamelPak and walked over to the Priory pub, which was open this morning and operating as a café.
A few people sat at tables with coffee. The woman behind the counter looked up and smiled, then looked at the object I was carrying and her expression shifted slightly. "Hi," I said. "Do you have water, please?"
"Yes, love." She nodded toward a sink lurking behind the coffee maker. "There's a tap full of it there."
"Right. Could you possibly fill this for me?" I offered her the CamelPak. She took it from me in the manner of someone who has been handed something they were not expecting and are being very professional about. She filled it and handed it back.
"Thanks very much," I said, sealed the bag, and headed for the door.
"Bye then," she called after me.
As I stepped outside I heard her say to one of the customers: "It looked just like his colostomy bag."

---

The second ascent of Hatterrall Ridge, Loves Young Dream, Colin's porn movie ....

We milled about in the small car park making the usual preparations — straps adjusted, video shot, water checked. A man and woman with dogs were also getting ready, engaged in an inconclusive discussion about which way the car park exit was. Nearby, leaning against a 4x4 with the easy confidence of people who have not yet walked anywhere, a young couple radiated the particular vitality of those in the early stages of being very much in love. They were, objectively, quite something — not a care between them, not a hint of the wear and reluctance that the rest of us were distributing across our faces in various quantities.
We set off past the priory ruins. Behind us, the Couple with Dogs eventually found the gate and followed uncertainly across the first field. Behind them, at an almost insolent stroll, came Love's Young Dream, arm in arm, entirely at one with the world and the morning.
The path warmed up gradually and then committed to climbing, as paths on Hatterrall Ridge tend to do. Bod walked beside me for a while and mentioned that his legs weren't working properly, then found another gear and pulled steadily ahead with the long, mileage-eating stride that covers ground without appearing to hurry. The usual formation took shape: Bod in front, Jo behind him and matching his pace, Colin either level with Jo or hanging back with the camera, and myself at the rear in the position I have come to think of as strategic observation.
At some point Jo apparently decided he wanted the climbing portion of the day concluded as quickly as possible and shifted into a mode that none of us had previously witnessed, reaching the summit some minutes ahead of even Bod. The rest of us found this quietly impressive but chose not to mention it.
Love's Young Dream, meanwhile, had effortlessly overtaken the Couple with Dogs and were now rising up the hillside toward me with the smooth, unhurried momentum of a thing being pulled upward on an invisible cable. I had to stop for a breather. They walked past. Arms linked. Not a bead of sweat.
"I'm getting too old for this," I offered, in a conversational tone.
They bestowed sympathetic smiles and floated onward and upward.
The path grew steeper and began to twist, which at least offered regular views back down into the valley — Llanthony Priory laid out below in its green bowl, the ruins intimate and toy-like from this height. From up here it was easy to understand the position the Augustine monks had placed themselves in: no defences, no military staff, deep in the borderlands where English and Welsh authority overlapped in the manner of two very antagonistic neighbours with no fence between them. The priory suffered repeated raids and incursions before the church reached the inevitable conclusion that some locations, however spiritually promising, are not worth the maintenance costs.

Bod and Colin on top of Hatterall Ridge

The stones that weren't carried off by local builders still stand. Just.
I continued upward in stages, accepting the menu of ailments with resigned familiarity: rubbed heel, knee grumble, the usual supporting cast. I rounded a hairpin corner and could see Bod and Colin stopped above me at what I sincerely hoped was the summit. On a far crest, already becoming faint with distance, Love's Young Dream moved serenely onward. I glanced down. Against all probability the Couple with Dogs had picked the correct path and would soon be catching me up. It is one thing to be overhauled on a hillside by people half one's age. It is quite another to be passed by people who couldn't find the car park exit. I applied myself.
Jo was at the top, installed in a rocky crevasse with his orange waterproof buttoned to the chin, only his eyes visible, watching the world from within with the wary composure of a man who has decided the weather is not his friend. He looked frozen. I found it pleasantly cooling at this altitude, but kept this to myself.
Bod was watching Love's Young Dream recede southward along the ridge — back in the direction we had come from yesterday.
"Not even out of breath," he said, with a degree of acknowledgement that fell just short of admiration. "I wanted to shove them off the edge when they walked past us."
Colin and Jo exchanged a glance and told us what had happened at the summit. Colin, having heaved himself over the final crest, had fished out the video camera and turned to film the achievement. Jo, sitting nearby, had observed: "I admire your enthusiasm. I wouldn't bother." It was at precisely this moment that the young woman of Love's Young Dream came into earshot and Colin, swinging the camera to capture the view behind her, said: "Well, it's something for me to look at when I'm older."
The expression on her face had, apparently, been that of a person who has just drawn a very specific and entirely incorrect conclusion.
"The view!" Colin had said. "I was going to film the view!"
But the damage had been done.

---

Moonwalking, sandwiches on high, small thoughts of a brother ....

The ridge, once we were on it, turned out to be exactly what the highest point of Offa's Dyke path deserved to be — and what none of us had quite expected after the climbs required to reach it. It was flat. Genuinely, gratefully, almost ostentatiously flat. A well-maintained track ran north across the heather and bog, and for the first time all week I walked without the particular attentiveness that uneven or angled ground demands.

Walking in the clouds

The clouds kept rolling in on the easterly, racing across the path in ragged white wreaths and periodically reducing visibility to fifty yards or less, but on a wide open ridge with a clear path underfoot this was atmospheric rather than alarming.
Where the track crossed marshy ground, huge flat slabs of granite had been laid as stepping stones — the work of path maintenance volunteers who had carried this material up here, used it to make a navigable surface, and then walked back down again. I thought about this as I stepped across them. The debt that walkers owe to these unseen people is considerable and almost never properly acknowledged.
We stopped at a trig point. I strapped on my knee support. Colin, whose right ear had been conducting a running argument with the side-wind for the last hour, produced a black hat with large floppy ears, pulled it over his head, and presented himself to the ridge. He looked like the world's least intimidating ninja. I was in no position to comment really, given my own hat choices for the week.
Bod peered at the GPS clipped to his lapel and announced that we were "more or less" at the highest point of the entire walk. What surrounded us was unlike anything else we had walked through that week: broken rock, small cairns erected at intervals with the inscrutable purposefulness of a Ridge Troll civilisation, tussocks of reed grass, and the grey vapour moving through everything. My three companions blurred, vanished into the cloud, and reappeared. It was magnificent in the specific way that places are magnificent when they make you feel entirely inconsequential. Somehow I found myself ahead of the others for a stretch and walked alone in the grey wind, which suited me entirely.
The path descended almost imperceptibly and then, with a series of natural stone steps, dropped us to a crossroads where the white acorn pointed right. Within a few hundred yards we walked out of the cloud and into clear air — damp and not especially warm, but visible in all directions, which after several hours in the fog felt like a small and specific gift.
We passed two volunteers working on the path — shovelling turf, preparing a surface for new gravel, performing back-breaking work at altitude that had required a long climb to reach and would require an equally long descent to leave. They appeared to be in good spirits about it. I find this quality in volunteer path-maintainers genuinely moving, and said so to Bod, who agreed with a nod that conveyed both appreciation and the implicit understanding that he personally would not be volunteering for this particular role.
Lunch on a slope overlooking the Olchon Valley, where a small tractor worked patient rows across a field below and, in the next field, a collection of caravans, a retired ambulance, and what appeared to be a military tank marked the encampment of itinerant farm workers with the cheerful disorder of a place that has long since stopped caring about appearances. The sun played tag with the clouds across the hills — patches of pale lemon light pursued by racing shadows. On a distant hilltop a tall white structure faded in and out with the shifting conditions, its purpose unresolvable from here. I bit into a segment of orange, discovered it was mouldy, and made the noise one makes in these circumstances. We prepared to move on. My legs, as always after even a brief rest, had formed the settled opinion during lunch that the walking portion of the day was concluded and took some persuading otherwise. Colin filmed my first few steps with the gentle amusement of a man whose own legs were not doing this.
The path worked its way down the north-western flank of Hatterrall, and the ridge — which had loomed on the horizon for two days, been climbed twice, walked across its full length, cursed at extensively, and occasionally admired — now prepared to recede into the past. We edged downward until the metalled road to Hay-On-Wye appeared and we stepped onto it with the quiet satisfaction of people who have finished something that needed finishing.

Colin descending from Hay Bluff

I turned for a last look. Hay Bluff, from this angle, was a blunt and undramatic knoll — the grandeur of Hatterrall visible only from its approaches, lost entirely once you have crossed it and moved on. Bod watched Colin attempting to film this anticlimactic aspect with amused scepticism.
In an odd way I knew I would miss the ridge. It had given us some of the best walking of the week and some of the finest views, and for the next few days, as it faded to a blue-grey smudge on the horizon behind us, I found myself turning to look back at it with the particular nostalgia reserved for difficult things that turned out to be worth it.
The route left the road almost immediately and led us across open grassland. Colin was directly behind me and I threw a remark about the weather over my shoulder. No response. I glanced back. He was walking with the loose, unhurried manner of someone whose mind has gone somewhere else entirely.
I offered a penny for his thoughts.
He came back with a smile.
"Sorry — miles away. I was thinking about Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to Kennedy. Whether they really did have an affair. Whether that's why she was bumped off."
I asked how he had arrived at this train of thought from a field in Powys.
"It's walking like this," he said. "Your mind goes where it wants. You do as many miles in your head as you do on your feet."
An eloquent observation and one I was to recall often on future walks.
We came down through old mixed woodland, skirting Cusop Hill, breaking occasionally into meadowland where the rooftops of Hay-on-Wye were visible below. I had assumed, with no particular evidence, that we were still in England. It was the Welsh radio station entertaining the cows at a farm near Cusop, and the Red Dragon flying from the farmhouse roof on a stiff breeze, that corrected this impression.
Hay-on-Wye, I discovered later, is Welsh. Despite everything the name suggests.

---

Recovery: The Priory Inn Llanthony ....

An earlier finish than we had grown accustomed to, and welcome for it. The shorter mileage had, however, introduced a nagging worry: our accumulated daily totals were falling short of what we had calculated, and the prospect of a surplus appearing on the final day was becoming plausible. Colin and Jo consulted the maps over dinner and reported back with the measured optimism of people who have found some contour lines they were hoping not to find. More climbing ahead. Hergest Ridge was approaching, which I had mentioned during the planning and which now loomed on the map with rather more closely packed contour lines than anyone felt entirely comfortable about.
Before dinner there was a diversion. I needed video cassettes urgently, and Bod suggested routing back through Hereford on the way to Llanthony, where Colin knew of a PC World. We drove the twenty miles, found it without difficulty, and emerged with cassettes that were additionally on offer. A genuine win, taken on its own terms.
We drove back to Llanthony only to find the Half Moon shut for the evening. We used the Priory instead — slightly more expensive, rather more efficient, the food arriving promptly and the ale arriving well.
On the wall, a plaque described the ancient sweet chestnut trees we had discovered on the first day near Bigsweir Bridge — the vast, gnarled specimens with their Tim Burton limbs and their almost hollow trunks.
They dated, according to the plaque, from 1588. Grown from saplings seized from the Spanish Armada — the Armada having apparently planned, once it had dealt with the business of conquering England, to do some gardening. The saplings were distributed to English noblemen as a symbolic tribute to Drake's victory, planted on great estates. The trees we had sat beside and admired were among the last survivors. Over four hundred years old now, and dying — as chestnuts eventually do. In a few decades they will be a tangle of bleached timber in a field that has forgotten what they meant. I was glad to have seen them. I had run my hands over their bark without knowing any of this. It is one of walking's reliable pleasures — that the landscape offers more than it initially declares, and occasionally something on a pub wall explains what your hands already knew.
The drive home came within six miles of not happening at all. My car's fuel gauge, which maintains a somewhat approximate relationship with actual fuel levels, showed a remaining range that, measured against the available roads between Llanthony and a working petrol station, translated to a journey of some optimism. We drove to Abergavenny with the careful momentum of people who have done the arithmetic and found it slightly uncomfortable. The petrol station appeared with just enough drama to be memorable and not quite enough to be genuinely awful.
Back at Brock Cottage there was the customary beer, and on the television a news feature about the car industry — specifically the Rover collapse, and the workers still waiting for clarity about their pensions. A grim story that had touched many people I knew. I was watching with appropriate gravity when the workers' representative appeared on screen and was introduced to camera.
His name was Maurice Minor.
I laughed. The day had earned it.

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