Day 66
Forden to Buttington: 7 miles
Bright Point of the Day: That I must not be 100% an old lady yet
Reason: Because I didn't actually break my hip
So, the nice weather I'd gotten yesterday well and truly departed today. At first I thought it would be fine - it seemed misty but alright. I even stopped at a very charming roadside homemade jam stand to buy some raspberry preserves (this was like the Stop and Shop of jam stands, they had everything from mango chutney to pickled purple cabbage).
But after about two miles I met the first two people I'd passed all day (actually it ended up they were the only two people I'd pass all day). They said they were doing the Offa's Dyke Path in stages, and that they had a friend who'd done it in the past and had offered to drive them to the beginning and end of each stage. Since they were from Shrewsbury it didn't seem to be that much of a problem.
While I was standing there talking to them, the heavens suddenly opened. At this point, because P had come to join me for a bit when I was in Knighton, I had a very small pack on and was wearing it under my rain jacket. But we actually had to break up our conversation (I recommended they just stop the day's hike in Montgomery) because the rain was running off my hat into my face so much I kept sputtering rain all over the place.
So on I went, and quickly found P - who told me that he didn't want to alarm me but that he thought he might be king of the birds. When I asked why he told me that up ahead there were like thousands of some kind of bird, who sort of parted for him when he came through. I suggested that rather than his being king of the birds, maybe these were grouse. Because on my map it looked like there were a string of what was called Grouse Butts. I'm not going to lie, I'm still not entirely sure what a grouse butt is, but I'm fairly certain it's not the bottom of a grouse and is therefore likely some kind of feeder thing that attracts birds.
I don't know for sure if I was right - but when we got to the spot he was talking about there were clearly birds still at a string of bird feeders along the side of the path. not nearly the thousands he was talking about - but if you looked into the woods you could see the reflection of beady little bird eyes from under bushes and behind the trees.
The Warning Beacons of Gondor
After that this hike really became something of a grudge match between us, the hills and the rain. I'd had P park near the thing on the map called 'Beacon Ring' that looked like it was a hill fort that crowned the top of a hill and was filled with trees. He'd parked nearby but hadn't gone up the hill yet - and what do you know, it was a hill fort filled with trees.
But the name 'Beacon Ring' wasn't just a cute turn of phrase. At least as far back as the 17th century this hilltop enclosure was one of a string of beacons, where a fire signal would be sent along warning Rohan that Gondor was being attacked by the host of Mordor. Or, you know, something equivalent using Welsh and English names.
They had last lit a symbolic beacon to celebrate Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887. More recently, to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, evergreen trees were planted such that you could read ERII (Queen Elizabeth II) from the sky. While the pictures looked interesting, the signboard explaining this rather grudgingly admitted that due to environmental concerns they were working on letting nature again take it's course and wouldn't be planting ornamental trees that had no business being in the area anymore.
Anyway, although it was a grey day, the area in the fort itself might as well have been nighttime in the northwest in a Twilight movie. In other words it was absolutely pitch black. We went in to see what we could see, but it really wasn't much. With all the rain, P was done for the day, so he went back where he came from to drive to meet me in Buttington. Yes, Buttington. Anyway.
The slopes around Buttington are surprisingly slippery
The rain hadn't entirely stopped, but after P left it did lull a bit. The path was easy to follow, first through more trees, and later through wheat fields (I think), all the time losing altitude as I'd been up on a bit of a ridge overlooking Powys Castle. At a certain point I thought wouldn't it be fun to try to run. Gone, of course, are the days where I can barely make it a full walk because I wasn't in great shape. After more than 500 miles I now apparently get small bursts of energy where I think it would be a great idea to start running. So I did.
I went pounding through (I'm rather flat footed) the wheat fields, down a few slopes, and around a few corners, and felt like I was making pretty good time when I stopped to look at a bench. What's funny is I'm always worried about falling because I've always had a tendency to be a bit of a clumsy runner - no one would be surprised if I fell over running. In this case, amusingly, it wasn't the running but the standing still that was a problem.
The bench I was looking at was on a fairly steep grass slope, and it had the nursery rhyme about the crooked man finding a crooked sixpence on a crooked stile. I wasn't entirely sure what it meant (though I've looked it up and some people believe it was about an uneasy truce between Scotland and England) but I figured I'd look it up later. Now I just moved around taking pictures of the stile from all sorts of angles.
Done with my pictures, I turned away from the stile facing the right of the hill, turned my camera off and went to put it in my pocket. At which point both of my feet simultaneously slid out from under me and I landed with the full force of my entire body directly onto my right hip. Because both of my hands were on my camera and neither seemed particularly interested in breaking my fall.
It hurt a lot, actually, but I still got up laughing because I'd been running along wet paths for the last 15 minutes and yet I fell over when I wasn't moving. What a way to break my 65 day not-falling streak.
I hobbled the rest of the short distance down the hill, noting that now I'd hurt my knee, my left hip, and my right hip, and it seemed like I'd gained a crack in my right shoe as well because both of my feet were soaking wet.
When I saw P we decided we'd had enough for the day, so we went to Welshpool and ate at the closest restaurant to the parking lot we could find (to stay out of the rain, of course we also abandoned plans to see Britain's only unaltered originally-sited cockpit. Yes, you read that right). We opted instead to make a lot of Indian waiters laugh when we ordered the hottest thing on their menu. Every one of them came to check up on us later, I think trying to see whether we were crying.
To be fair, it was the first time I've actually had properly hot food in Wales. But it was great - and now I'll always think of Welshpool as the Indian food capital of Britain.
