THE Hills – 31 aug, 2018
Day 25 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Kington to Knighton
Distance: 23km
Cumulative distance: 631km
It was a bit of a slower start today, given Google Maps and its scatter-brained narrator took us to Kington Farm instead of Kington. We’d spent our last night in Hay-On-Wye the previous evening, and gone back to the Three Tuns for another feed. Mum dropped us up where we’d finished walking yesterday, and just to be sure I walked all the way back down the road to where I’d entered the high street in a steadfast attempt to make sure every single footstep was connected. Yeah, still pretty stubborn I can assure you. Dad and I left town and almost immediately took the wrong path, following a little stream a bit too far before realising we were meant to actually cross it. We backtracked a little way and ended up hauling ourselves up a farmer’s field gaining plenty of height, and earning a superb little view back over Kington. Once again I had that all too familiar feeling that we weren’t quite on the path, and I soon worked out we’d strayed a bit too far east. The Offa’s Dyke Path was about 200 metres away, on the other side of two barbed-wire fences. We tackled the fences and resumed normal transmission, crossing over the Kington Golf Course where an old bloke was carefully preparing for a tee shot with the course all to himself and delightful views stretching out to the south. What a life.
Just past the golf course we stumbled across the actual Offa’s Dyke! Now this probably doesn’t sound overly exciting on first inspection – the dyke is an earthwork which much of this path actually follows up along the English and Welsh border, but this is a special part of the UK indeed. The Dyke was built by King Offa’s men in the eighth century and stretches for nearly 100 miles up the border, a great mound through the countryside rising up to several metres in height at certain points, next to a deep ditch. As far as eighth century border defences went, I’m tipping it was one of the world leaders. We followed this bad boy for long stretches today as it cut across the country across farms and through the Welsh hills. One such farm was being ploughed as we walked past, and high above a group of slowly circling vultures (I presume) were waiting patiently for their own harvest. A bit further along we skirted around a hill and looked back to an incredible view of Hergest Ridge which we’d walked along yesterday. We’d been going for a while now, but it still looked relatively close and we’d need to progress several more miles still to escape from its gravitational pull.
We headed downhill to a road and crossed a bridge, arriving at the base of our next hill which stood in the way of us and our lunchtime rendezvous with Mum. Before heading up we bumped into the three American ladies, and then we were off negotiating various waves of steepness, and occasional steps. There were more sheep, cattle and horses at the top and soon enough we had to leave it all behind with a long, sustained downhill. At the base was a tranquil little stretch of the River Lugg, where patches of sunlight broke through the overhanging tree. It was a place only accessible by walking which was nice to know. Mum was waiting for us in Dolley Green with another brilliant lunch, and we gave our legs a decent spell – these Welsh hills were making us work! As always seems to be the case, I was blissfully unaware that the worst of it was coming for me tomorrow.
A quick glance at the map showed the post-lunch stretch was going to test us out – those contour lines were very close together and there seemed to be far too many of them. The map didn’t lie – almost instantly we turned up a driveway and ran into a massive incline which we figured led to the top of the hill towering above us. It was a decent slog, and all said we had about two miles worth of steaming up that hill before it started to flatten out into more farmland overlooking the Welsh and English countryside. We were about 400m above sea level again and Hergest Ridge, while still visible in the distance, was starting to shrink away out of sight. Further along we found a huge memorial in the middle of a field to Sir Richard Green Price, a Herefordshire man who had moved to Knighton when he was young and played a key role in several of the railway lines running through this part of the country. The obelisk we were now admiring stood on a section of his old estate. Beyond the memorial we crossed a few roads and felt Knighton was getting nearer and nearer. That also meant one more almighty downhill before we could call it a day. It was nice and flat up here, and the walking was very straightforward, from gate to gate over endless fields. It felt like joining dots together and was a far cry from all of those times I’d emerged into a field and been forced to guess which direction I needed to follow.
The downhill I feared still hadn’t arrived which concerned me, because it simply meant when it did it would be steep. And these downhills were still my Achilles heel. We passed another golf course and then it was upon us. It started steep and became steeper and steeper as we went – Dad pretty much ran down it and I followed in his footsteps hoping my knees would hold together. At one stage we were rewarded with a set of steps which made things slightly easier, and eventually the forest spat us out at the top of Knighton. The path was replaced by road, but there was still a sting in the tail of the hill. By the time we stumbled across Mum in the car park our knees were on fire, but we’d just about made it. Although not quite – I’d decided I wanted to check out the Offa’s Dyke visitor centre which turned out to be up the other end of town. It’d shave off a bit of the start of tomorrow’s walk, plus it sounded like a pretty cool place. We walked up past the clock tower, beyond a few pubs and then several hundred metres more before finally we came to it, just where the path heads away from town and back into the hills. It had everything you could possibly want about the Offa’s Dyke Path including a lifelike sculpture of King Offa himself, a stack of maps, books and other information. I bought the next few OS maps I needed before we finally called it a day.
