stage 2 – Offa’s Dyke South

The second stage starts off up the lovely Wye Valley and cuts into Mid-Wales,

 

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  1. day 3 – Severn Bridge to Llandogo

    miles walked: 15.7   completed: 57.7   to go: 1002.6

    Day 3 takes me from the Severn Bridge to Llandogo, in the heart of the Wye Valley. Whereas the trip from Cardiff to Severn Bridge was dominated by the signs of 19th and 2oth century industry and heritage, moving into the Wye and Offa’s Dyke is more a shift to the mediaeval and older: castle and monastery, hill fort and folktale, wild leaps into the unknown. However, as I walk I found that while this certainly is a place of Norman Castles, Saxon ramparts and Iron Age hill forts … it is also home of First World War ship-buiding and the heart of early copper and tin industry. The day also marks the end of the Wales Coast Path and start of Offa’s Dyke Long Distance Path.

  2. day 4 – Llandogo to Monmouth

    miles walked: 7.3   completed: 65   to go: 995.3

    An easier day; walking with Janet and Lewys, tea & cake at the Kymin, Monmouthopedia and BBQsrc, a missed meeting and a welcoming interstitial community

  3. day 5 – Monmouth to Pandy

    miles walked: 16.2   completed: 81.2   to go: 979.1

    A day with Les, the Lancastrian Welsh speaker; woodstove and subterranian pump, old churches and multicoloured markers

  4. day 6 – Pandy to Hay-on-Wye

    miles walked: 17.8   completed: 99   to go: 961.3

    This day runs almost all along a ridgeway with only the odd walker along the way. So more a day of wide panoramas ( both real and photographic) with little in the way of human settlement, let alone technology.

  5. day 7 – Hay-on-Wye to Kington

    miles walked: 14.5   completed: 113.5   to go: 946.8

    This was a relatively relaxed day’s walking through farmland and low mountain moorland. It started with a discovery and ended with a meeting, with the odd monkey puzzle tree between.

  6. day 8 – travel day from Kington back to Monmouth

    a milestone - the first phase of the walk complete; a vetran walker on the bus, a 90 year old dancer, and the haunted house of Watery Lane

  7. day 9 – leaving Monmouth and flying to Paris