Day 2 Saturday 8 June

We started the day determined not to miss any signs and managed to keep to that resolve except for  a minor miss in the town of Monmouth and later a major one that cost us an hour of extra walking through long grass on a farm. Grr!

We could see where we needed to get to but we couldn’t take the short straight line route because of the thick prickly fences. In New Zealand one can just climb a wire fence. Not here! I was getting grumpy.

My body was not happy with me for taking it on another damn long walk. Some jet lag combined with sore thighs from the climbing yesterday , a sore shoulder and back, made for an unpleasant day for me.

We walked mainly through wooded areas that enthusiasic locals were trying to regenerate. Again that meant lots of wild nasty stff trying to scratch or sting us.

Being Saturday we met up with quite a few clean, fast people with little day packs who were just out for a nice stroll. Many with their dogs. They pissed me off!

Some were doing longer sections of Offa’s Dyke but from pub to pub with their gear being transported for them. They pissed me off as well. Gosh I was a grumpy bitch.

We were the odd ones. I imagine the talk at the pubs would have gone a bit like this.            

“Did you see those two old ladies from New Zealand who were walking the FULL Offa’s Dyke?”

“Yes and they were carrying tents and a weeks food.”

“The bigger lady looked shattered. They were slightly mad, I think”

We stopped for coffee and a pastry in Marnmouth, a quaint  town with narrow cobbled streets, a big church which provided  a pew to sit and have a rest on. I downloaded another app that was suggested by some walkers we had met earlier. Maybe that would help with the route finding and my mood.

Our lunch stop was at a church out in the middle of nowhere. The vicars husband was there doing some maintenance work so we were told all about the history of the church, going back to 500AD. That meant a decent break in the sun drinking coffee provided by the church.

It was too early in the day for us to camp but he told us that they welcomed walkers to camp or sleep in the church. That was good news as one of my  plans was to camp in graveyards. No crowds, usually toilets and taps to fill our water bottles. Being able to sleep inside a church was even better.

The afternoon was mostly through farms, lush green crops, funmy looking self shedding sheep and mole holes.

The shedule I had copied was not made for an unfit Granny with her house on her back, so we again, didn’t make target.

I ranted and raved a bit, well a lot,  saying I wanted to go home and hike with a decent app and signage

Then ee came across the ruins of an old castle and decided to camp there the night. There was some mowed lawn and picnic tables so we were pleased. The house by the gate  looked like a caretakers house and we didn’t want to have some grumpy lady come and send us on our way. So we got out of sight behind the moat wall and cooked our dinner before putting up our tents.

My theory was thaeat if we were found asleep we would be left alone.

A few tourists wandered around but left us alone. I had to crawl out and growl at a Woodpecker for tap,  tap, tapping while I was trying to get to sleep. But I woke next morning in a better mood.