Off to Brockwier today. We had been meaning to go here for ages, but mostly end up going to Tintern. A walk had been described in the times last weekend, so thought we may as well do it. Arrived into the brockwier inn car park around 11, expecting a 6 mile, 3hour walk and expected to be back in the inn for a late lunch.
Following the instructions from the paper we started well, opposite the inn, follow the road to orchard cottage, then up the restricted byway and up, up in the mud. Been walking uphill for about 20mins now, so I figured it was about time I passed a snowball to Kate, it went down her back – she wasn’t delighted.
About now things went wrong, the write up said that we would get to a t junction, go left young man it said then follow the offas dyke trail. No darts, couldn’t find this track so wandered up the wet boggy track. We have never been able to find offas trail, ever, never – perhaps it doesn’t exist.
The trail turned into a stream so we decided to cross some fields and see if there was a road way. As we crossed the field we realised it was sort of like someone’s garden, but luckily no nasty farmer shouted. We hopped a hedge and found ourselves on a road a little lost, we decided to head back to brockwier, but bumped in to the farmer who looked at us with a little bit of disdain as we said we were lost and had no map. Anyway, he said we probably went wrong when we crossed his field!
He pointed us in the right direction and we headed off. Not to Offas but down the ramblers path to the river. So the walk wasn’t quite 6 miles and we got ourselves back the pub by about 12:30 after spending some time trying to hit a stationary wife with snowballs, and wading through more mud.
Back into the pub and a pint, cheesy chips a fish finger buttie for me and a tuna sarnie for Sian, great filling food, and 18 quid for the lot.
Might have to examine the route in more detail if we are to return.