Offa's Dyke
Longtown to Hay-On-Wye
September 9, 2024
The first order of business after leaving the Crown Inn at Longtown was to get up to the ridge which was where the route was. The ridge is runs north -south and so we had to scale the 1500 feet from the valley floor to the ridge. There is not direct path and although I had carefully plotted it into the GPS we could not exactly follow it and then got off track and wound up struggling through 6 foot high ferns for over an hour to reach the path to the top of the ridge. It took us two hours to reach the ridge and we had covered only 2.5 miles.
We were all ecstatic to reach the first stone marking the trail. The view along the ridge was unbelievable. However up on top of the ridge the wind was howling into our faces at 25 mph. The ridge had a gentle up hill slope for the first several miles but it was really quite pretty. A lot of the path had been paved with huge flag stones. They must have been placed by machines in recent times as there was thousands of stones.
At the north end of the trail along the ridge was a rather gentle path along the side of the hill which took us into Hay-on-Wye.
I wound up with something just over 14 miles on the Garmin and 2270 feet of climb. I was really glad to be in town and really thankful that it was a beautiful sunny day up on the ridge. I cannot imagine what it would be like in a driving rain storm.
Terry
5 comments:
Fantastic terry! That's quite a climb!! So glad the weather was good.
Chris
Glad to see the sun.
Quite the view! Great pictures. Take care.
Great views from on top of the world. I can’t imagine what it would have been like in rain and fog. Way to go. Weather Gods are looking out for you. 😊
PHX Jim
Wow, quite the weather experience you're having with heavy rain, soggy ferns, strong winds, power outages and at least occasional glimpses of sun. Of course all perfectly predicable for that area this time of year. You're making tremendous progress Terry. I envy your unique meal experiences.
Post a Comment