| Offa's Dyke - South | |
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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.
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Window shopping in Hay-On-Wye |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Bod watches cloud shadows on the hills |
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.
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On Hergest Ridge |
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.
See Route on ......
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