| Offa's Dyke - North | |
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A local castle, a game old bird ....
My alarm summoned me from sleep at half past seven. Jo had been awake for a while and was tapping commands into his phone. I had a dim recollection of having to get up in the small hours for a pee, and of the obligatory stumbling about in an unfamiliar dark environment that followed. I distinctly remembered trying to climb inside the shower cubicle at one point and making a God Almighty racket as I bounced between glass panels. I felt sure this must have brought Jo to a snorting and abrupt state of wakefulness and hoped the subject wouldn't come up.
We washed, dressed and presented ourselves for breakfast. The husband served us, chatting as he brought in hot coffee and warm buttery toast. Fresh fruit was also available and I gratefully stowed a banana for later consumption with lunch. I had the feeling that my Artful Dodger impression may have been observed, as one of the packed lunches we were given was minus the apple that the others had. To my guilty conscience this was as clear an accusation as a pointing finger, but all was well when we settled the bill.
We changed into our walking gear and watched the taxi we had booked cart our excess luggage off ahead of us to that night's accommodation. My spare underwear was to spend the week being ferried about in comfort while I sweatily tackled hill and track.
We left the farmhouse at quarter past nine. As the husband waved us off I cast a glance at the sky — grey and hinting at rain, but the air was pleasantly cool. Good weather to start walking. We strode off across fields of pasture, cows remonstrating with each other as we passed. Today's route, according to my book, would take us over a flat stretch through the valleys of the Caebitra and the Camlad, then up and over Long Mountain, then down into the Severn Valley and on to Buttington. A short walk back into Welshpool from there, where we would be spending the night.
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Little Brompton Farmhouse |
Rolls of gathered hay were dotted about the fields. Occasional belts of trees appeared to our left. Bod walked a little way ahead of Jo and me, and the two of us fell into conversation about our family and our respective years working in learning disability. Light rain pattered over us in brief spells but always stopped before we had to contemplate waterproofs.
We were about two and a half miles in when we crossed a field and saw the battered remains of Montgomery Castle standing ruinous but somehow enduring above the town. Bod muttered something about being English and therefore duty-bound to charge the hill and finish the job. A mound four or five feet high ran the length of the field to our right and we debated whether it was part of the Dyke. Jo thought it looked too modern, but reading up on the route since returning home I'm fairly confident it was Offa's Dyke. Corndon Hill and the Kerry Hill Ridge remained in constant sight as we moved forward.
We swung suddenly off the field and onto a track that looped through woodland — Lymore Park. Little groups of birds scurried ahead of us or darted across the path.
“Are they Quail ?” I asked, with superb ignorance.
“ Partridges, I think," Bod answered. "Quail are a lot smaller."
He reckoned they were survivors of the recent shooting season. As we strolled around the disc of a placid pond, we became aware of the pleasant clip-clopping of hooves. Two ladies were catching up with us on their horses, so we stepped aside and let them pass. One of the horses plodded leisurely off ahead. The other was a little skittish and kept threatening to prance sideways.
"If I were her, I wouldn't want to be riding him on the outside of the track," observed Jo. He was right — the skittish one was sidling along the edge that gave way to a steep drop into tangled undergrowth. His rider didn't seem concerned, and they disappeared from view without incident.
Persistent pussy, a local lass ....
We left Lymore Park and crossed the B4386 on the way to Rownal Farm. We passed Rownal Covert — a small area of woodland to our right — and approached the farm itself along a track that brought us almost to the bottom of the front garden before an Offa's Dyke signpost on a stile directed us left.
It was while negotiating the stile that we acquired a friend. An overly curious kitten materialised from nowhere and fairly demanded to be fussed. It showed no fear whatsoever. I obliged indulgently as I climbed over, scratching it under the chin and around the ears, at which point resonant purrs began emanating from its chest. As I attempted to walk away, it jumped up and attached itself to my trouser leg — and the skin beneath it. Bod and Jo took this as their cue to hurry off downhill across the next field. I was forced to pick the kitten up in my arms, if only to prevent it climbing further using tiny needle-sharp claws which were heading unerringly toward my crotch. Once in my arms, Kitty became delirious with pleasure and rumbled at me blissfully.
How was I going to get rid of it? I had visions of us arriving in Prestatyn with a cat.
I wandered back toward the farmhouse in the hope of finding an owner but remained alone in the yard, apart from my devoted furry companion. I was standing next to a Land Rover, considering whether I could try one of its doors and deposit the kitten inside, when rescue arrived in an unlikely form. A herd of sheep began spilling along the track and through the farmyard. Kitty did not like this development and stood up in my arms, back arched and little face perturbed. I saw my chance, put it quickly on the ground, and it scuttled — outraged — beneath the Land Rover to peer from behind one of the front wheels. I waded through a river of bleating sheep, climbed back over the stile and hot-footed it down the slope toward Bod and Jo, who had waited.
Jo mentioned that he'd spotted another kitten in the yard and noted that at their current size, either of them would make an excellent meal for an opportunist Buzzard.
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Bod descending from Long Mountain |
We walked on through a brief tunnel of trees, then between some houses and across more fields to a footbridge over the River Camlad. We had just climbed a small rise and were swishing through grass when we came across another walker sprawled on a grass bank beside the track — a man who had started from Chepstow the previous Monday, six days ago. He didn't seem in a particular hurry to continue. We wished him well and moved on. We would encounter him again on the very last day of the walk.
We crossed the B4388 and were faced with a steep bank thick with ferns — the flank of the Upper Hem Quarry. We began to climb it immediately and the gradient made it a grind from the outset, my breath being steadily extracted as I laboured. Jo and I pulled ahead of Bod, who was taking this one slowly. Jo observed that he could hear his own joints cracking.
"I feel like a Transformer, ” he said.
“Rigor-Mortis!” I cried, by way of a name for him. We tried to laugh and quickly discovered we didn't have the oxygen reserves required.
Bod continued to pull himself up the hill while Jo and I recovered at the top. He informed us when he arrived that he was experiencing abdominal pain and finding the going hard. The descent on the other side of the disused quarry was gentler, and we moved off across more fields and then along a lane that took us sharp left back onto the B4388 at a more northerly point in its length. We walked along it briefly, then hooked right onto the A490 and almost immediately off it again, turning left across yet more fields.
We approached the outer limits of Kingswood village, walking at the end of back gardens and passing various domesticated animals — hens, goats. Bod held open a metal gate for me, swinging it back and forth as I approached. "Smoother action than my knees," he noted.
We walked by a farmyard whose garden contained a small caravan and, next to it, a strange effigy: stick arms, large eyes, a grass skirt and what appeared to be the bottoms of plastic bowls serving as breasts. Jo said something about meeting a local girl. I peered at her through the camera lens.
"She's alright, actually," I murmured.
"She might have some land," said Jo.
Beacon ring, fowl conditions, a local Buddha ....
We diverted left along a narrow tree-arched track and climbed gently, gaining only a little height before joining the course of a Roman road. This began taking us uphill with more determination, progressing to obsession as it became ever steeper. We were boxed in on both sides by high banks, and Bod and I debated which one might be Offa's Dyke. My book clarified that the Dyke was first on the left bank and then on the right as the road climbed, guiding us toward Long Mountain in what was now spitting rain.
A man on a racing bike shot downhill and whizzed past me, followed by two more. One of them had the audacity to shake his head at Jo as he flew by, indicating that Jo was in his way. What a moron — he was flying around blind corners at breakneck speed; we were walking along the side of a lane.
We stopped for a breather and a drink at a wooden lodge and reconciled ourselves to the fact that there was only one big climb remaining — toward Beacon Ring on Long Mountain — and then all descent. We continued into the Leighton Estate and mixed woodland, still climbing steadily on an earthen track between conifers, silver birch and larch. Blackberry picking broke out among us. Bod and I were the main culprits. Jo had a brief graze and then walked on.
As the track levelled, we passed some very large Monkey Puzzle trees — I had no idea they could grow so tall. We descended again, steeply, passing Phillip's Gorse, and then immediately began the climb toward Beacon Ring. Jo and I strode upward alongside field edges toward what is a pre-Roman Iron Age fort, built around 700 BC. Bod fell behind and was clearly struggling.
"If it was anyone else, I'd be worried," said Jo. Bod is something of a tough customer.
I was finding the climb hard but manageable as we turned toward the wooded top and began going around it in a clockwise direction. It had become very windy up here, so we continued around until the wooded interior of the fort began to offer some shelter. We stopped for lunch. The woods were planted to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the fort itself was occupied until AD 60. Jo celebrated these facts by walking into the trees to find a suitable one.
The views were misty over the Severn Valley but gave us a fine look at Welshpool below. We sat and worked through our packed lunches and I then had to locate my own tree. It was very quiet and dense once actually inside the wood — an eerie place, you'd think, after dark.
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Jo descending from Long Mountain |
After about forty minutes we packed up and moved on, completing the circuit of the fort and beginning our descent. We walked past a large and prominent television mast and then down, ambling past the valley of Cwm Dingle with its conifer plantation. I glanced straight down the fissure as it cut toward the Severn Valley, which was opening up splendidly below us as we moved away from Long Mountain.
We continued through fields, both Bod and Jo at various points conducting telephone conversations with the outside world. A stile took us down past Stonehouse Farm toward a duck pond.
"I think these ducks need a bigger pond," observed Bod.
He was right. Scores of mostly mallards were crammed into a body of water roughly the size of a tennis court, all of them producing their distinctive quacking laugh. With every bird doing it in succession, the area sounded like a lunatic asylum. We moved on and started up a path toward a B-road when Bod stopped, suspicious at the absence of an Offa's Dyke acorn signpost.
We were slightly off route. We doubled back and received another volley of merriment from the ducks as we passed them again. Bod walked on ahead and discovered that a marker post had been pulled out of the ground and was resting against a hedge.
"That's why they were laughing," he said, consulting his map.
Jo and I wandered about in the helpful manner of people with no map, while Bod looked up and spotted a gate across the other side of a paddock.
"Give us a shout when you get down there," Jo called as Bod set off toward it.
Bod had guessed correctly and we were back on track, following a small brook and crossing it before reaching the B4388 yet again. This took us to Buttington and the connection point for our walk into Welshpool. We followed the B4388 briefly, then crossed two fields via footbridges and our first railway track of the walk, after which a short steep bank brought us onto the A458 at the east end of Buttington Bridge over the River Severn. Pneumatically hissing lorries and blatting engines were a shock after the leafy calm of Beacon Ring. We negotiated a roundabout and then left the hubbub behind, striding along a lane to the Shropshire Union canal.
I arrived last, having stopped to film. Jo was lounging against a metal rail and told me he could see the statue of something back along the canal bank in what appeared to be a small picnic area. He was peering beneath the arch of the canal bridge to get a look at it, so I went under the concrete dome and zoomed in with the camera. "Bald, fat man," I said, after a few seconds of deliberation. This didn't seem quite adequate.
"It's like a standing Buddha," I added.
Jo lost interest and walked away.
"Is it along this road?" Bod asked, and as I started to reply a sign caught my eye.
"There it is." We had stopped directly beside the Westwood House, our stopping point for the night. It was half past three.
Recovery: The Westwood House, spicy eggs and a home movie ....
A couple of drinks seemed in order and we hastened inside. Half a dozen or so people in the bar gave us the cursory once-over reserved for strangers who enter a local pub, but there was no hostility and the barman was a friendly fellow who produced free Scotch Eggs with our pints. These, I should say, were fabulous — made on the premises and given an extra kick with chilli powder. They went down a storm with Bod and me. The conversation in the bar was lively, the flat screen TV in front of us cycling through the day's sports results, and the ale went down in a velvety flow accompanied by a rhythmic bobbing of Adam's apples.
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On Long Mountain |
Sated, we were shown to our rooms. Jo had his own space; Bod and I were sharing room six. Given the dimensions of this room, there wasn't a great deal to share. We dumped our gear, thus halving the available floor space, and Bod showered while I took a wander around with the camera.
I went downstairs and entered the bar while filming, at which point an immediate uproar broke out as the assembled company realised they were film stars for the next few minutes. Banter flew and good-natured ribaldry was tossed in my general direction. There was loud discussion that I had been sent by these lads' girlfriends to keep an eye on them, or by some more legally structured authority. As this last suggestion was raised, several people began pointing at a figure on a bar stool. From the enthusiastic shouts of his companions, I gathered his name was Oz and that he might have reasons to prefer anonymity. He was certainly not keen on the camera — he swung away from me on his stool, hiding his face and waving me off. Everybody else found this raucously funny, but I took the hint and moved on.
Back in the room, Bod had evidently showered and then begun reading, before turning on his side and falling peacefully asleep. His reading glasses were askew on his face. I took a shower of my own and rested on my bed.
Presently we all felt recovered enough for a walk into town. Food rather than culture was the chief item on the agenda, and to this end we mooched around a succession of quiet and apparently closed-for-the-night parades. We were discovering that some small towns still maintained the mostly extinct British tradition circa 1970s of shutting everything after six on Sundays. During the course of this discovery, I walked into a concrete bollard — perfectly visible, completely solid — and gave my knee a meaty whack. Bod laughed in a concerned manner and walked away while I flexed the joint experimentally. It seemed alright, but I was aware of a bruised feeling for the remainder of the walking week and a lovely crescent-shaped mark appeared above my kneecap.
In the end, we were forced into an over-bright café adorned with the kind of fluorescent lighting that would have done justice to a football stadium. My eyes began to throb within minutes and the inadequacy of the burger and chips I'd ordered was pitilessly revealed in the harsh glare. I felt marginally better about the whole expedition when I discovered that the place sold Magnum ice creams and contentedly worked through one on the walk back to the Westwood.
We turned in. Bod and I both attempted to read. Bod was making glottal noises within minutes and I found the sound too distracting, so I also settled down. To my untold joy, he continued to have resolute outbreaks of snoring throughout the night.
Daily Tweets
Twitter from @BabbleRouser (Jo)
Woken by Foghorn Leghorn this morning. On border of England/Wales.
12 mile yomp to Montgomory today
Sep 5th via mobile web
Twitter from @BabbleRouser (Jo)
For Monty, read Welshpool. Wishful thinking!
Sep 5th via mobile web
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
First signal since I arrived. Eating lunch on an Iron Age hill fort called Beacon Ring. Only another 3 to 4 miles to walk. Terrain; easy.
Sep 5th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Pasture, woods & a couple of B roads. Only Long Mountain has presented anything like a challenge. Bod's not feeling well, mind. Gut ache.
Sep 5th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
We are reposing at Westwood House. A friendly crowd & the landlord does wicked Scotch Eggs impregnated with chilli powder. Ingenious.
Sep 5th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Just back from a wild Sunday night in Welshpool. Managed to whack my knee into a concrete bollard on return to The Weston. This was unwise.
Sep 5th via txt
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
I'm tired and looking forward to a good kip. The chances of this happening are slim, given that our room is situated above the beer garden.
Sep 5th via txt
See Route on ......
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