| The Wye Valley Way | |
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Ross-on-Wye (twice) ...
Take I
Early morning sunshine, which we both knew was provisional. We had arrived in Ross via Mordiford, where we left the return car, having enjoyed an hour of eccentric sat-nav guidance that contributed nothing to the efficiency of the morning but provided a comprehensive scenic tour of the surrounding countryside. We parked in a small car park in the town centre, I said a few words to the camcorder while Colin performed his hamstring stretches — the specific routine that makes him resemble one of those street performers who impersonate statues for hours on end — and we set off toward the church. Within a few minutes Colin cheerfully informed me that he had left the guidebook at the cottage. I called him a rude name. We went back to the car. We drove to the cottage. We retrieved the book.
Take II
Standing before the large oak doors of St. Mary's north entrance, fiddling with rucksack straps and trying to determine how to gain the route proper, we were found by the church warden — an amiable man who opened the doors, wished us a good morning, heard our plans for the day, and suggested that a brief tour of the interior might be a pleasant way to begin. We agreed.
I had driven past Ross-on-Wye on the A40 bypass many times since Colin moved to the area, and the town presents a fine view from that approach — built on a low hill above the river's course, buildings stacking up one above the other, the spire of St. Mary's rising two hundred and five feet above them all. The interior had always been a matter of speculation. Now we were going to find out.
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St Mary's Church, Ross-on-Wye. |
As we left the churchyard we passed the Man of Ross pub, where Colin and I had once enjoyed a legendary lock-in, and paused to read the inscription above its entrance:
*John Kyrle (1637–1724). Gained fame for his community involvement, his modest lifestyle, and charitable works. He helped settle disputes, aided the poor and sick, supported schools, and left the beautiful Prospect Walk with a fountain and garden to the citizens of Ross.*
Kyrle was born to wealth, educated for the law, called to the bar, and then declined to use any of it for personal advantage. He lived quietly in his house overlooking the market square and spent his considerable fortune on the town and its people — settling disputes, funding schools, relieving the sick and poor, physically labouring on the projects he founded. He died at eighty-seven, having apparently found this a perfectly satisfying way to spend a life. Alexander Pope wrote a poem about him. I find myself thinking that a week or two in his company would have been an enlightening experience.
Good deeds and wrong turns ...
We set off — rather late by now — down through the streets of Ross toward the river and our next passport stamp. The establishment listed in the passport book was derelict, had clearly been so for years, and appeared to have no successor. We tried two cafés and a shop along the embankment. All three told the same story: they had applied to the Wye Valley Way organisation for a stamp several years ago and were still waiting. A blank space in the passport. A minor irritation, and nothing like as irritating as what came next.
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The River Wye after Ross. |
The correct direction eventually delivered us out of Ross and into meadows of wild grass and bracken, passing a makeshift campsite where people were erecting marquees for a canoe event in the rain with the resigned competence of people who have done this before and know how it tends to go. This was our fourth day on the Wye Valley Walk and we had yet to see a full day of fine weather. We began to wonder if this was going to persist all the way to Plynlimon.
The tumbled rooftops of Ross fell behind us. To the west, across fields and lines of trees, we could make out the Wye Lea estate and the old house at its centre — Colin's cottage was in there somewhere, as close as the walk would bring us. We had been approaching it steadily from the south for four days. Now we would continue north and west, crossing eventually from Herefordshire into Wales, leaving England behind us entirely.
The chafing had started.
For those who have not experienced it: when damp clothing saws repeatedly across skin that has been walking all day, the results are specific and unpleasant — a burning rawness that persists well after the offending attire comes off. I have experienced it before and I have learned. The Vaseline was in the pack. At a convenient hedge I applied it liberally to the affected regions and we continued.
Hole-in-the-wall and a whole lot of gradients ...
The strangely named hamlet of Hole-in-the-Wall announced itself along a quiet lane between high hedges and Cow Parsley — a couple of cottages, a phone box, a small green, and a wooden bench. We stopped for a soggy lunch. The bench was dedicated to the owner of Classical Ventures, the company whose headquarters we had passed entering Ross the previous day, which suggested he was either a former resident of Hole-in-the-Wall or someone who found the name appropriate for a memorial. We sat with our sandwiches in light rain, saw no one, and didn't linger.
A derelict mill for sale on the lane below caught our eye — planning permission included, optimistically described as suitable for residential development. It occupied a genuinely lovely position above the river valley, commanding views in all directions, and would have rewarded a developer with sufficiently deep pockets and a high tolerance for structural challenge. It was essentially a shell. We admired the view and kept walking.
Update: Google Street View now shows this ruin to be fully restored and skilfully converted into a substantial property with enviable views.
The rain eased briefly as the lane swept down into an open valley running alongside the river. In a small field, a man sat at the window of a parked caravan with a cup of tea, warm and unhurried, watching the grey day go past. His wife was a shadow in the kitchen area, probably constructing bacon sandwiches. They had a television and a dry afternoon ahead of them. I envied them for approximately ten seconds before remembering that I wouldn't swap.
Colin had diverged from this route the previous week on a walk to Birmingham — heading north and east through the forests toward Malvern. The Wye Valley Walk took us westward instead, down to a grassy path along the river. A large group of walkers came the other way, heading toward Ross from Mordiford. We told them their route was a pleasant flat few miles. They told us ours was about to get hilly. We had planned on no significant climbing today and it seemed we were about to be corrected on this.
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A view from Capel Camp. |
A small brook led us across fields to a crossroads and then upward — muddy tracks, bridleways, metalled road, all sharing the common characteristic of rising. We climbed. The levelling-out, when it came, brought us onto high ground between hedgerows, the river somewhere below and invisible, the hills all around us reduced to dim suggestions by a heavier downpour. We could hear the landscape rather than see it.
At How Caple the rain eased. A patch of blue appeared, the kind that usually seals itself within minutes. This one did not. It widened. The sun came out properly, for the first time in four days, and we climbed through Hales Wood and Capler Wood to emerge on a long hill above Iron Age earthworks at Capler Camp — an overgrown rampart of elder and blackberry on our left, a shallow valley of hedged fields below us, low hills encircling it in all directions. After four days of grey the sunshine was so welcome that we stopped and simply stood in it.
Then the black flies appeared.
Thousands of them. They didn't bite — that was something — but they swarmed around our heads with the specific ambition of reaching ears and nostrils, requiring continuous arm-flapping to discourage them. We descended to escape, quite sharply at first, through meadows of lush grass and small copses of rowan and bilberry, into what appeared to be a farmyard-business-park hybrid — porta-cabins beside agricultural machinery, all deserted on the bank holiday. The signs offered fresh fruit and, apparently, holidays to Budapest. We did not investigate further.
The sun held as we crossed a road near Fownhope and found ourselves in a bowl-shaped valley surrounded by grassy domes of hills. A woman and two young children were working through a rough-ground pasture with the focused enthusiasm of a bug hunt, the grandmother — she was clearly the grandmother — bringing as much energy to the enterprise as her small charges. They waved as we passed. Happy people in a pretty place doing uncomplicated things in unexpected sunshine. There are moments on a long walk when you feel that a scene in front of you is precisely what the world should look like, and this was one of them.
Feisty canines and frolicking cows ...
We escaped the valley by climbing again — Common Hill, its wooded slopes offering the familiar sequence of sneaky gradients and twisting paths past ancient lime kilns dug deep into the hillside rock. The kilns had been abandoned long enough that mature trees had wound their roots around the old stonework, making it difficult to tell where the masonry ended and the hillside began. Ridgeway paths with woodland falling away on both sides. A pleasant kind of walking, if tiring.
A woman approached with a Springer Spaniel, all doggy grin and wagging tail.
"Don't worry," she said. "He's fine."
I made encouraging noises as the dog approached. He barked excitedly. I passed him.
He nipped my calf from behind.
It was a mistimed nip that left no damage, and I was considerably less concerned by it than the dog's owner, whose face delivered a masterclass in the specific expression of someone who knows that what has just happened was entirely their own fault and cannot usefully dispute it. She apologised at length. I waved it off. We continued.
Lee and Paget’s Wood came as the afternoon's reward — ancient woodland, four hundred years minimum, the late sun casting its best light through newly opened leaves onto carpets of Bluebells and Wood Anemones. Box-like structures were fixed high on some of the trunks — too regular for natural features, probably bat roosting boxes for a conservation
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Mordiford village. |
The last pasture was small and enclosed and contained three young heifers who had seen us coming and were waiting at the gate with the eager anticipation of animals for whom a visitor is the most interesting event of the week. They were enormous, friendly, and entirely without spatial awareness. Colin went in first, clapping and waving to create some room. The heifers shied back, interested and slightly startled, then followed him at a cautious distance toward the exit. I climbed over behind them and followed the same route.
Colin escaped over the exit stile. The heifers remembered there was still a playmate in the field and turned back toward me with renewed enthusiasm. I hopped sideways over a fence, waited while they lumbered past, hopped back, and cleared the stile.
The three heifers stood forlorn in their paddock, watching us go.
Down a short farm driveway, onto a small road, and across a quaint stone bridge above a brook was the Moon Inn, its sign as welcome a sight as anything in the four days of walking.
We presented our passports. A friendly young barmaid stamped them. We carried them outside and arranged our stiffening legs under a trestle table and drank cold beer in the mild late afternoon. We agreed we could have managed several more but another car waited in Ross-on-Wye and the Merlot back at Brock Cottage wasn't going to drink itself.
Four days done. The walk had not yet produced a fully fine day and Hereford was next, and then the Welsh border, and then the long approach to Hay-on-Wye and whatever lay north of it.
But that was for another time. For now there was beer, and the walk could wait..
For a full profile of the route (PDF format) click here
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