DAY 22: White Castle to Hay

DAY 22: Great Tre-rhew Farm to Hay on Wye
Today: 22.0 miles
Total so far: 354.2 miles
Percentage completed: 21.2%

(Click map to enlarge)

The reprise for the walk at the end of a long day: My feet ache. Again.

The guide for Offa's Dyke starts today at Pandy, some 8km past Great Tre-rhew Farm. I think that is a good plan. I arrive at Pandy after struggling in slippery mud and over even more slippery styles at 10:30am - to start the Guide Book's 28.2km to Hay.

(Black Mountains - morning mist)

Then it was straight up onto Hatterall Hill and the long ridge walk to Hay Bluff. Lunch heralded the onset of clouds and more rain coming straight at me, but I was doing okay. But the Mud! I seem to bang on a lot about mud, but this stuff has to be seen to be believed. The very worse bits have been slabbed, but it is hard going in the wet.

But I made it alright into the 'Rest for the Tired' B&B - very aptly named - to lie on the bed trying to stop the feet killing me, with three cups of tea. Tea has magical qualities, see, look you, boyo.

They don't do phone signals round these parts, so who knows where this will be posted from. So you won't know about the merlins I saw, the ravens and buzzards either. The Sugar loaf, signs to the magical Llanthony Priory and Capel-y-Ffyn. The clouds whistling over me, soaking my increasingly rufty-tufty beard.

(Black Mountains)

I am very tired again, and listening to three women in Kilverts (with some very nice 'The Reverend James' - a good discovery) each trying to top the other with appalling tales of dreadfully rich relatives with no manners and hateful wives. None has had a good word to say the hour I have been here, but this has been softened listening to Paul Jones with his excellent choice of blues music on Radio Two.

I have decided, quite surprisingly for me, that I LIKE people! (Apart that is, from the three hateful hags sitting on the next table.) Now, where did I leave that Big Red Button with "Eliminate" typed on it in big, scary letters?

One last thing: I have been carrying Rachael's tin of whiskey flavoured fruit cake since Bath, and I scoffed it with relish on the Black Mountains today.

Thank you Rach. Diamond Girl.