| Offa's Dyke - North | |
|
By Colin Walford
Day Seven Route: Bodfari to Prestatyn Distance: 13.5m (22km) Elevation: 0ft (0m) to 860ft (262m) Climbing (ascent and descent): 2,129ft (649m) and 2,375ft (724m) 
Prev
|
|
|
|
|
|
No taxi - no lunch, Sodom Covert, wind problem ....
It had rained overnight and clouds were still lurking about with real intent when we got up. Breakfast was fabulous, though a little spoiled by our host, who seemed at pains to repeatedly make clear that we would be walking back into Bodfari and would certainly not be getting our disfavoured little arses into his gleaming car. We were under no illusions about this and hadn't been counting on it, but there was no need to hammer it home while we were trying to enjoy the lovely food in front of us. We got ourselves ready quickly and, having not pre-ordered packed lunches, set off toward Bodfari to find a shop.
We walked away from Glan Clwyd under a moody sky, retracing our steps through high-hedged lanes. We had all enjoyed our stay, despite the additional walking now required. At one point two dogs stationed behind a gate took it upon themselves to serenade us with a hysterical duo of yapping. I finally lost my patience and yelled at them to be quiet. This worked remarkably well and acute silence followed.
Back at the Downing Arms, we found a small shop opposite and were served by a nice, chatty woman. Then we were on our way — briefly along the roadside path before an immediate sharp left up an extremely steep lane. So soon after a hearty breakfast this was a bit of a body blow, but we laboured upwards and noticed, on the way, that the resident of one of the houses had been brave enough to display an England flag outside his back window.
"I notice that he has it out the back, not the front," said Bod.
I considered this briefly. "I bet he tried having it out the front."
"Cost him too much in window replacements," Bod replied.
The ascent continued at a ridiculous angle — up through a field that suddenly revealed how much elevation we had gained in just a few minutes of toiling. We reached a plateau and rested. Jo and I silently recovered our composures. Bod was still nowhere to be seen, though I thought I could make out vaporous clouds of exertion issuing in steamy wisps from amongst the vegetation below. We waited by a stile. Once Bod had stertorously joined us, we contoured around the woodland and the hill-fort of Moel y Gaer. I could see the television mast on Moel y Park across the Wheeler Valley from which we had climbed. A short section of small road allowed us to walk in single file and relax briefly from our recent labours.
The respite was short-lived. For the next hour we encountered vigorous ascents almost continuously — over fields, up little lanes, on hillsides scattered with gorse. It was always about gaining altitude. We reached a place called Sodom Covert and noticed that the wind had become robust. This increased as we climbed Cefn Du. At the top, we rested briefly and could see Prestatyn in the distance — the finishing line, real and visible at last. I filmed despite the wind mauling my voice before it could reach the microphone, and despite the microphone's habit of converting even the lightest breeze into a hollow roar that renders anything I say unintelligible. Happily, this isn't so far from my normal mode of communication.
The Sick Hiker, the end is nigh ....
We strode down the back of Cefn Du along a fairly wide lane — one section of which suddenly became energetic with cars and the possibility of being maimed. When the traffic thinned we walked abreast and talked easily. The coastline remained visible on the horizon, its outline softened to a hazy aubergine by the impurities in the air. Beckoning.
After a while we joined a road at the western edge of Coed Bron-fawr woods. Bod and I walked together, Jo having lagged behind, lost in his own world. A junction took us left and then right, continuing north. It was just after the right turn that we came upon the walker we had met on the first full day of the week — the man we had passed just after crossing the River Camlad on the way to Buttington Bridge.
He was sitting in a curiously collapsed way on the grass verge, looking dishevelled and pale. He recognised us and began to explain that he wasn't feeling well. His voice had very little strength. He had been walking for three days on an empty stomach, unable to keep any food down. He had clearly acquired some kind of malady.
 |
|
The stone marker at the end/beginning of the Offa’s Dyke walk |
We were making the appropriate noises of sympathy and commiseration when Jo came striding around the corner and caught up with us. He immediately noticed the pale, collapsed figure on the verge.
"Every time I see you, you're sitting down!" he boomed, accusingly.
The docile heap before us seemed to shrink a little further. Jo was awarded, in absentia, the title of King of Tact for the day.
We left our ailing companion to gather what strength he had and walked on, the road climbing heartily again past a caravan site. We climbed over stile number one hundred and eight of the week and went up the slope of Moel Maenefa. From there we could see, ahead of us, what was clearly the last leg of the journey. The buildings and infrastructure of a well-developed town lay scattered in front of the sea behind it. I think at this point we were actually looking at Rhyl rather than Prestatyn, which was still concealed by higher ground to our right.
Bod confirmed that the A55 was just ahead — a road we had to cross.
"Are there any more hills?" I asked.
"I'm not...saying...a word," said Bod. "Though they're probably building sand hills on the beach for us to climb, as we speak."
I murmured that distances viewed could be deceptive.
"Well, there's a pub we pass just about halfway through today's walk," Bod reasoned, "and we haven't reached it yet."
Just then, our ailing walker appeared over the brow of the hill behind us. I began filming his lurching approach and then remembered myself and swung the camera away. "I'm off again — filming people's misery and suffering."
He reached us and I watched him fix his gaze on the distant sea with something approaching rapture, muttering the same phrase to himself repeatedly in a quiet, distracted and slightly hysterical way.
"My God, what a beautiful sight."
I watched him, half expecting him to break down in tears. It was plain that his two-week adventure — planned at home, yearned for while he was stuck somewhere small and airless — had betrayed him rather brutally.
The final gradients, golden showers, the edge of Prestatyn ....
While he gathered himself, the three of us began descending the south-western slope of Moel Maenefa on a narrow path through tracts of gorse. Our sick friend rejoined us on the lane below. His gait, I noticed, had become very floppy and undisciplined — his arms didn't so much swing as flap bonelessly. He looked as though he were being operated by an extremely bad puppeteer. I was filming and commentating when he overheard me mention that we would shortly have to begin the climb up and around Coed Cwm Hill, visible just ahead. He stopped almost immediately and sat down in the field we had just entered, muttering something dispirited that included the phrase *rest time*. Jo told me afterwards that I had broken him at that point. He had had a wild, rolling look to his eye — like a man being dragged under by strong currents.
The three of us still upright walked on through what appeared to be a disused or chaotically managed farm and then through further fields taking us gradually downward, until we reached a large and splendidly ugly concrete footbridge spanning the A55. I crossed with the others, looking down at the speeding traffic below. On the other side, we passed a couple of men heating something unidentifiable on hexamine burners. We continued down a lane, past a tethered goat that was enthusiastically attempting to eat its way through a tree. I spoke to it in a friendly, beseeching way and received plaintive bleats and a wary disposition in return. The road took us down into Rhuallt and the pub Bod had mentioned — the Smithy Arms.
 |
|
Me at the stone marker |
Our sickly walker appeared once more as we made off. With pallid resolve, he joined us as we turned up a very steep path through a light patch of woodland. As the gradient increased, he fell behind again and had to stop. My last sight of him was of him wilting against a tree. We left him there and never saw him again. He may well still be in that wooded copse, assessing the hill in front of him.
This incline was part of Mynydd y cwm and I also had to stop at the top, sitting astride a stone wall to film and recover my breath simultaneously. My body deliberated briefly on the benefits of returning my recently eaten sandwiches. The last three days of the Offa's Dyke path, I reflected, are not soft walking. From where I sat I could already see the A55 bridge we had crossed — below me and some distance away. When my pulse had slowed to the point where I could detect individual beats, I continued on a dirt track curving through gorse and ferns to rejoin Bod and Jo on a road.
Overhead still cloudy, but up on Mynydd y cwm it was humid and oppressive amongst the thick flora. We went down a long leafy lane with Ffrith Fawr woods to our left, glimpsing the sea and the wind turbines of Liverpool Bay. Two fields of harvested crops followed — the stubble shin-high, making a harsh rustling against our boots. Bod and I moved ahead, Jo often a couple of hundred metres behind us by this stage. Another field, another narrow track between residential gardens, and then a road with houses and a postbox at Marian Cwm. Bod and I stopped for a drink and waited for Jo. I asked Bod to retrieve my Lucozade bottle from my pack. When I opened it, it erupted over both hands, leaving them drenched and uncomfortably sticky.
"I didn't shake it up, honest," Bod smirked.
We rested for only a couple of minutes and then walked up the rocky slopes of Marian Ffrith, dotted with hardy shrubs. The whole day had been a series of up-and-over manoeuvres. At the top came the first real, touchable glimpse of the sea and the thirty or so turbines of the North Hoyle offshore wind farm. Breezy up here. We eyed another hill with suspicion — Moel Hiraddug — but Bod's map confirmed that we didn't have to do it, as he eloquently put it, but instead had to skirt around to the east. Jo had walked several metres ahead and Bod called out the good news. Jo continued walking, apparently oblivious.
"He's ignoring us," said Bod.
"He's had enough of us, is what," I said, then reconsidered. "Come to think of it — I've had enough of us."
We descended the north face of Marian Ffrith and traipsed across another field of harvested crops, then through a farm in obvious disrepair — some buildings with collapsed roofs, though still apparently occupied. Jo was a little ahead, nodding amiably at two women approaching through a gate. A couple of slate stiles followed — curious constructions, like hard tables, and hard work to negotiate on travel-weary legs. We grumbled in a good-natured way before descending more cropped fields toward a finger of trees — the remnant of an ancient hedge — which led to a bridleway and then a track down to a canalised waterway, some waterfalls and the wreck of an old water-wheel behind iron railings.
I saw a sign and felt a jolt of shock. We had, suddenly, reached the outskirts of Prestatyn.
Jo's anger, seaside rendezvous, another stone - another walk, touching the waves ....
After a brief pause for consideration, we walked along a track that joined a road and then went up, inevitably, through another field after crossing the A5151. We joined a caravan trail of walkers proceeding in obedient single file, two of whom turned out to be the pair I had watched leaving the Smithy Arms car park earlier. Up the open field, past Ty Newydd Farm, over a stile, left, down a track, yet another field. I noticed as I trudged along that rain showers were angling down all around us in the middle distance, yet we escaped all of them.
Across another field beneath sonorously humming pylons, overtaking the older walkers in silence. Further fields, a small road, a path skirting a house — and then we were, abruptly, on the Prestatyn hillsides. From here we understood where Prestatyn lay relative to Rhyl.
 |
|
Bod at the stone marker |
The end of the Offa's Dyke walk was now clearly imminent.
I had stopped to film when the Two Older Walkers caught up and pointed out where they thought the finishing marker lay. As we walked on, I became mildly disturbed to find the track going upward again, through sprawled woodland. Up we went. It levelled out along a metal wire fence on our left, with impressive views of craggy rock formations below and part of the sprawl of Prestatyn. We found ourselves skirting the top of an old quarry and then, outrageously, a feral climb appeared directly ahead. So near the end. I felt personally affronted. Bod and I could only stop for a moment and laugh.
We climbed above Coed yr Esgob and along the ridge. Jo had suddenly sped off ahead and was nowhere in sight.
At the highest point of the ridge, just below seven hundred feet, I set down the stone I had carried since the Sedbury Cliffs in the Bristol Channel — apart from the year it had spent on my bathroom shelf back in Bridstow. Another walking tradition completed, another small piece of one place left at the extremity of another.
I strode on. A couple and their teenage son greeted me somewhat warily as I passed and negotiated a stile. I understood why when Jo told me about it later. That last incline had exhausted his entire store of patience and he had forged ahead, determined not to stop until he had crested the ascent. He had met the family crimson-faced and greeted them at volume — *ALRIGHT!* — before marching on with terrible resolution. I had come across them while they were still in shock.
An equally steep descent through trees brought me to a small road where I found Jo, sitting quietly. He explained that he had become incensed when faced with that last climb and had simply torn off, determined to get off the ridge as quickly as possible. He hadn't slowed down until he reached this road. He told me he wouldn't have stopped — would have maintained the same angry pace all the way to the finishing line if the uphill had continued. He had simply had enough. He suspected the family of three had concluded, from his demeanour and abrupt greeting, that the three of us had been arguing and that he had stormed off in a high-altitude sulk.
He was not entirely wrong.
It was a longer walk through town than I had anticipated — something over a mile, brushing past many people on the busy street. I kept turning the camera on to film the finishing point and then realising we weren't there yet, but had another noisy arcade to pass. We finally went by the scaffold-clad train station and onto the last stretch of road, leading all the way to the stone marker near the sea front. I was filming as I approached and captured the actual moment that Bod and Jo stopped walking.
That was it. All those miles over two years, and it came down to reaching a large rock and stopping. Still — we had completed the Offa's Dyke trail, and that was a pleasurable enough thought.
A signpost nearby suggested we had walked more miles than we had thought since Chepstow the previous year.
"I'm sorry!" said Bod, "But if someone had told me it was a hundred and eighty-two miles to Prestatyn, I would never have agreed to it!"
"There is a five-mile discrepancy," I said. "I want my five miles back."
"They're in my legs," said Bod.
"In that case, you can keep them."
The stone marker disagreed with the signpost, which also disagreed with my book. It would seem that nobody can agree on the precise length. We are perhaps not the only ones who didn't know exactly what we were taking on.
Bod and I walked onto Prestatyn's beach and went forward to greet the sea by paddling our hands in it. This is a tradition from the Offa's Dyke walk itself — hands in the water at both ends.
Jo didn't join us. He went off looking for a toilet, which had become a tradition of its own.
Celebration: The Halcyon Quest Hotel ....
We found our digs for the night — The Halcyon Quest Hotel — without much difficulty. Our apartment had two rooms and a bathroom and Bod got the single room. The place was perfectly acceptable without being wonderful, which was fine for our purpose since it had a bar downstairs.
I was, in all honesty, glad the walking was done. A sharp pain behind my right shoulder had developed over the week under the weight of the rucksack and stayed with me for several days afterwards. Something to look into before the next walk.
One of the Four Walkers called to announce they were already in the bar. We needed no further encouragement, freshened up quickly and joined them. It was an enjoyable evening — pints and jokes and laughter flowing freely. During the evening one of them recommended a walk called The Two Moors Way, a hundred and two miles through Devon over Dartmoor and Exmoor. They had plenty of good things to say about it. I filed this information.
We said our farewells to the Four Walkers eventually, wishing them luck with future excursions. Bod and I went out into what had become steady rain and hunted down food in the shape of enormous pizzas. Mine was full of garlic and I spent most of the following day's train journey home reeking at close quarters.
I didn't spend much time that night going over the achievement of the past twelve months on Offa's Dyke. I was too tired and fell asleep quickly. What I can say, at a little distance from it, is that it was probably my favourite walk so far — though memory can be unreliable in this regard. It has been five years since my brother and I walked the West Highland Way and that was also fabulous. Perhaps if I walked it again it would reclaim the title.
A few months after completing Offa's Dyke, I drove past a prominent section of it on an errand into Hereford. Part of the route revealed the Hatterrall Ridge in the distance, looking purplish against the late afternoon sky.
I've never considered myself someone who wants to redo a walk. There are so many still to do and I can't imagine investing the time in one twice. But the sight of that ridge as I drove by made me want to do Offa's Dyke again. It is so varied and splendid, and I was remembering with a fair degree of wistfulness the day the four of us climbed and crossed Hatterrall. I'll probably have that feeling every time I drive that way, and I find I like that — the idea of having a connection with a piece of landscape that will always evoke something specific. It can only be that as the years go on and more walks accumulate, I'll build a growing store of such associations with the beautiful parts of this country.
I look forward to building that store.
Daily Tweets
Twitter from @BabbleRouser (Jo)
Bodfari? Very fari!
Sep 10th via mobile web
Twitter from @BabbleRouser (Jo)
Passed through Sodom today. Don't believe the hype!
Sep 10th via mobile web
Twitter from @BabbleRouser (Jo)
Sun is in the sky, oh why oh why would I want to be anywhere else?
Sep 10th via mobile web
Twitter from @BabbleRouser (Jo)
Arrived at the pearl that is Prestatyn. Maybe packing my England rugby cap wasn't such a good idea?
about 1 hour ago via mobile web
Sep 10th via mobile web
Twitter from @BabbleRouser (Jo)
Walking boots worn out and left in hotel room bin. Will shop for a new pair. If only replacing knees was as easy!
Sep 11th via mobile web
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Last night's digs was a good experience, marred slightly by not been offered a lift back into Bodfari this morning. It meant an extra mile & a half onto today's tally of 12 miles. Moreover, we immediately had to throw ourselves up some steep hills on leaden legs. We all suffered and conversation was sporadic. However, Prestatyn is now tantalisingly close. The pub in Rhuallt was closer, which is where we're now sat.
Sep 10th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Have just finished the Offa's Dyke walk and we're sitting in the sun on the Prestatyn sea front. The last 3 days have been tough walking.
Sep 10th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
I ache, I stink & I've been wearing the same underwear for 3 days, but I feel peculiarly self~satisfied.
Sep 10th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
All sharing a room of standard, but ok quality. I seem to have developed a raging ache in my right shoulder. Repetative Rucksack Fatigue.
Sep 10th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
On train back to Ledbury. Jo left at ten & Bod, Denise & I took a look at a waterfall in Prestatyn & had a quick peek at Rhyll. Very quick.
Sep 11th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
We also saw Seals bobbing about in the sea just off shore in Prestatyn. They seemed as curious about us as we were about them. Cute.
Sep 11th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Feel scruffy but in fine fettle. Could definitely walk a lot more miles yet. However, home & a hot bath awaits. Might even consider shaving.
Sep 11th via txt
See Route on ......
|
|
|
|
|
Prev
No comments:
Post a Comment