Offa’s Dyke Path (ODP) – 285km -12 days

Words from the official site.

During the 8th century, King Offa of Mercia ordered a great dyke to be built to mark the western boundary of his kingdom with Wales. Offa’s Dyke Path follows the course of this ancient earthwork from Chepstow to Prestatyn, passing through scenery of great beauty and variety along the way

Words from me

Our idea that all walks im UK were flat or rolling coutryside with quaint villages every few kilometres, was shattered when I looked at the details for Offa’sDyke (ODP).

We had chosen this trail because of its start place being close to Bristol and headimg in the direction required to eventually reach Edinburgh.

We will cross the Anglo-Welsh border over 20 times, and pass through 8 different counties! We will also pass some high and barren mountains (which can be savage places to be in bad weather apparently) and calm, flat sections of riverside trail.

Information tells us that it is graded as  challenging, difficult, strenuous depending on the site used.  I have been convincing myself that this is a UK based scale and hopefully equates to Easy on a New Zealand scale. Most climbs are only 200-300 metres which was hardly a bump when I was doing Te Araroa which was 3,000km through rugged New Zeakand moutains and bush. But that was 4 years ago and I am now an Old Age Pensioner. We will see.

Kay was on the bus as planned at Heathrow  airport so we had a good catch up on the 4 hour ride to Chepstow. we arrived in the little village, and  stayed the night  in a nice room in an old pub.   We did our food shop consusting of 5 packeys of instant noodles, prridge and cheese and crakers, so were ready for day one.

OMG! That first day was a long  hard day for my  fat, unfit body. The guide said it was 32km to Monmouth and it should take 8 hours.

However we stuffed up the bus timetable to the start and ended up walking the 4km getting lost a few times trying to take short cuts alongside a motorway resulting in over am hour of walking before we even started at the coast. Kay said we need to get lost once a day so it was good to get it out of the way before we get onto the trail. I agreed.

We walked for nearly 11 hours, up and down, around and around weaving our way through little paths behind beautiful old cottages. Sometimes across farms and along narrow roads with prickly hedges either side with nowhere to duck out of the way of the traffic.

UK has adopted a go back to nature stance on grassed areas. I first noticed on the bus to get gas, in london. All the parks are overgrown, lawns not mowed, gardens not weeded and hedges not trimmed. Their aim is to increase diversity; bring back the bees amd other creatures. It really looks messy and I think this keeps the accountants happy and the rates down.

We were relying on Google Maps and All Trails for directions to compliment the signage. My theory about good signage went out the wondow but to be fair it may just have been that we missed some of them.

I think some signs had been there since Offa was alive and are now overgrown and hard to find.

We did quite a bit of back tracking and I got grumpy with having to be online using precious data to find our way. In NZ maps can be downloaded and used anywhere without data. We will have to get something better sorted.

Anyway that was only one of my challenges for the day.  I was struggling to keep a decent pace and huffing and puffing as though I was up a mountain in Nepal.

Kay has come from walking for 37 days on a Camino in Spain, preceeded by a month tramping in New Zealand so she is  very trail fit which made me feel even worse.

Our plan to find somewhere close to the end of the section to wild camp was buggered by the holly and blackberry  bushes that grow everwhere and masses of stinging nettle. Also few flat places to pitch up tent.

I was at snails pace, and had used up all my will power by the time we reached  a little village of Redwood, 5km from our original target.

We stumble into the little shop saying “We are two absolutely shattered ladies.  We have been  walking for over 10 hours and need somewhere to stay or put up our tents.”

The nice lady  told us that either of the 2 pubs may have a room or we could camp on the village green straight across the road. Music to our ears. We found a nice little spot and put up our tents. I moaned and goaned getting up and down but eventually we were eating our 2 Minute Noodles and feeling much happier. I had made up part of my overspend at the Hyatt

.

I crawled into my tent at about 8.30 in bright sunshine  absolutely exhausted, sore all over and full of pills.

Awake now at 5.30 in brilliant sunshine unable to move wothput hurting but  listening to the meloudious birdsong. Day two is supposed to be  a 6 hour 25km day, but we are 5 km behind and I will not be moving fast.

We will see.