the toughest day – 1 sep, 2018
Day 26 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Knighton to Mellington Hall
Distance: 20km
Cumulative distance: 651km
I had a feeling I was embarking on a difficult stretch after Knighton – the Land’s End to John O’Groats book said something to the effect of ‘No matter what you’ve done so far, nothing will have prepared you for the stretch between Knighton and Montgomery’. Typically I just nonchalantly ignored that and figured it couldn’t be any harder than what the South West Coast path had thrown at me, or even earlier stretches of this Offa’s Dyke. Once again it turned out I’d completely underestimated what was ahead. The aim at the start of the day was Montgomery about 27 or 28km along the path and I can reveal right now that I didn’t make it anywhere near that. Mum and Dad were off this morning down to Hampshire to visit Michael’s mum Pauline, so I was back on my own for a few days which meant it was time to dust off that old tent again. They dropped me back in Knighton and I did a bit of shopping before hearing a boisterous ‘JAAAAAAAAAAMES’, turning around to see the American ladies again. They were taking a bus to another town today and walking about five miles into a village called Cwm at the end of it, so as to avoid the 10 miles I was about to tackle. I bade them farewell and headed off back up past the visitor’s centre and on my way.
As usual, I ended up off track almost immediately heading about 90 degrees in the wrong direction before recalibrating, crossing a little river and heading on my way. Down by the river was a cool little spot where you could stand with one foot in Wales and one foot in England, do I did this before carrying on. I told Mum and Dad about it and they made sure to do it themselves, before driving on down to Eastleigh. I crossed a railway line and was into it squaring up to a sheer wall of earth with the path instructing me to go up if I were to continue. That went on for a long time, it was a bit like that hill I had to climb before arriving in Minehead a couple of weeks ago – long, steep, and seemingly without an end. But I was fresh enough given it was the first of the day, and FINALLY pulled myself huffing and puffing to the top of it.
Below me was Knighton which already looked quite small, and off in the distance was the last hill we’d come over yesterday before emerging in town. Fortunately the next few miles was a bit kinder – still a little undulating but I’d knocked off most of the climbing and could now just savour the views. I swung around the boundary of a few fields passing the usual livestock and felt I was in particularly good stride until I ended up at the high corner of a field full of low lying ferns and clearly nowhere near the path. That I could see well below me, some 150 to 200m or so. Hmmmm. I could either retrace my steps to the turn I’d missed, or just take the most direct possible route and pick up the path down below. I pointed myself downhill and tried navigating the ferns. There were two problems here – it was ludicrously steep, and I couldn’t see where I was putting my foot half the time due to the dense ferns. I tried to stick to the areas where I could see the ground but these eventually ended and it was up to me to just hack my way through. That damn path below me didn’t seem to be getting any closer! But I ploughed on and after about 15 minutes I reconnected with it and with a quick look back at what I’d just come down, carried on. Good grief my knees were fireballs already. That descent was absolutely ridiculous.
I walked through a farm, met a nice dog and then headed uphill again, although this one was a lot gentler and it followed the Dyke. Another steep downhill followed and I stopped in Newcastle for lunch, veering off about half a km or so into town hoping to top up my water bottle at the church. There wasn’t a tap unfortunately, but I still had plenty of water so that was all right. I took a pretty decent rest to give my knees a chance to breathe again before heading back to the path where I discovered the hills were just getting started.
As I noted in my diary ‘The climb out of Newcastle was a bloody joke’. It was so steep, to the point that it was almost a hands and knees job. I broke my rule halfway up of never stopping until at the top when I saw a sign telling me this was the halfway point of the Offa’s Dyke Path. That was kind of cool, but there was still a lot of hill to navigate so I took a quick photo and resumed the climb. I turned around at the top to another stunning view and relaxed in quiet accomplishment for a microsecond before looking to my left and realising there was more to come and that it was even steeper. A few times I almost slipped back down as I tried to lug myself up this thing. Even without a chunky pack this would take some serious doing. There were no steps on the path, but no real handholds either so I was stuck somewhere between a steep walk and a climb. My reward at the top of that hill was an almost instant downhill plunge. Any comfort my knees had taken from the wee lunch break was now completely obliterated. This up and down pattern continued for a little while until I arrived at Newchurch where I virtually collapsed on a bench in the cemetery. I couldn’t find any water here as well, but I got chatting to a local who told me I was about two hours away from Mellington Hall where I’d decided was my new end point for the evening. Montgomery was still miles away and there was no way in hell I was getting that far. She also said there was one more major hill to get over and then only a few other little ones. Her final piece of information was that there was indeed a pub at Mellington Hall, and I clung to this little nugget of motivation for the rest of the way.
Walking out of Newchurch was very tough as she’d said, and within minutes of this ascent I was on fire again. Everything, knees, calves, quads, glutes, toenails. It was a decent test of the old mental strength too but I just kept powering forward and eventually made it to the top where I saw a sign telling me I was in Shropshire. I pushed on, and was rewarded with another ‘JAAAAAAAAMES’ as I ran into the American ladies once more. They’d taken their bus trip and were now in the final stretches of their hike to Cwm. I had another chat to them before leaving them behind, realising it was probably the last time our paths would cross. They’d been great fun along the way, always so happy and chatty and enthusiastic about everything. Mellington Hall wasn’t too much further along, and the owner of the place gave me a warm welcome before taking me down to the nicest campsite I’ve had so far. I was adjacent to a lush, green field of cattle and not far away from a beautifully manicured pond. The pub was also an incredible old building, and a couple of pints helped take the pain away from my knees ever so slightly.
