Offa's Dyke

Oswestry to Llangollen

September 15 2024

When we got on the road this morning the rain was coming down pretty steady, and the wind was whipping the trees around.  Fortunately most of the time we were in quite heavily wooded country so it wasn't too bad.  As we left the town of Oswestry the sign said  Trefonen so who knows.

As we climbed steadily we entered Race Course Woods which last nights host said was very beautiful and it was.  Unfortunately we took a wrong turn some where in the maze of trails in the large walking park and wound up putting on about and extra half mile of tramping in the rain.  When we go to the top of Race Course Woods hill we came to the ruins of the old stadium for the race course.  It was built in the early 1800's but was only open for a few years until the lower class's horses started winning and then it was shut down (that is what the sign said).  

It was a fairly steep down hill from the race course. Even the road was 17% so you can imagine how steep the trail was.  The steep wet grass and muddy trail made the going slow,  So between the rain, wind, and steep trail no bodies spirits were very high.  So I made a remark about how nice it was that the rain had turned to a heavy drizzle from the pouring rain.  This was meet with a bunch of growls and remarks that I should be called Mr Happy. 

We got down about the 9 mile mark and found that there was a diversion where some work was being done on the trail and we had to make the detour.  We could see that it was only about 50 feet of work and I am sure we could have walked past it however it was barricaded so we has to take the 1.5 mile detour to mark what was no more than 100 meters.  

After a bunch of ups and down and following some really high dyke path where the dyke was a good 30 feet high we came down to a busy road.  Ken's knee was done and Judy was cold, wet and tired.  There was bus stop there but no bus on Sunday.  Ken wanted to go to Chirk which was about 2 miles in the wrong direction and hopefully find a taxi.  I looked on my Here We Go app and saw that it was about 1.5 miles to Pontfadog.  The Swan Inn showed up on the app so even if we could not get a taxi it would at least be in the right direction.  So off the trail and down the busy road with no shoulders.  

We trouped into the Swan in a pretty bedraggled bunch.  The lady behind the bar said she would look for a taxi for us but didn't hold too much hope.  So while she looked for a taxi we sat and drank our beers.  About 20 minutes later she cam out and said no taxis but if we didn't mind squeezing into her little car she would drive us over the hill to the Squirrel B&B where we are staying.  It was only 3.3 miles and a really steep and bumpy back road.   We were delighted. She was off work in a few minutes and we piled into her little car and we were off.  She saved us. 

Over all we wound up with about 13 miles and 1755 feet of elevation.

Terry