Day 68
Porth y Waen to Oswestry: 8 miles
Problem of the day: Living in Wales for 10 months, we still haven't bought an umbrella
Reason: Downpours happen in summer. And many other times, apparently
For the record, Oswestry isn't actually on the Wales Coast Path. And the path runs by Chirk Castle in the next stage. But Oswestry is close enough that that's where I'll say I stopped due to incoming thunderstorms, and then headed off with P in the car to nearby Chirk Castle to see what there was to see while we needed some shelter.
Up and out of the forest
The immediate walk out of Porth-y-Waen crossed abandoned railway lines and then went through a small bit of wild forest. A bit later the path starts climbing, until you reach what had been inexplicable on the map - but makes perfect sense in reality - a left hand turn to the top of a hill that then almost immediately U-turns. The reason it's there is there are lovely views from the top of this hill.
After several days of lowland walking without much in the way of long views, the little marker stone indicating that on a good day you could see all the way to Cadair Idris and Snowdon was a great reminder of both how small Wales is in reality, and how big it can seem because of the landscape. Especially since I still won't get back to Cadair Idris for another two months or so.
After descending, I ran into a man with a dog, and a sheep scurrying frantically in front of them which didn't know what to do when it saw me. The man stopped to talk, and apparently this was someone P talked to yesterday - and he was doing the same thing with his wife that P was doing with me - coming to visit occasionally, and driving to the end of the hike and walking back to meet her. Apparently I'd also walked past him yesterday - his wife was part of the group with the dogs that the cows had tried to scare off. She was walking all the way from Cornwall to Scotland - with her own design firm she could take off the whole summer, and figured she might as well try it this year while she still could. Sounded familiar. Besides the owning the design firm part.
We parted ways and I made my way eventually through the small town of Trefonen, where I found P who was now covered up to his knees in a thick cake of what I hoped was mud. He immediately told me that it was hopefully mostly mud, but that he'd followed the path through a cow pasture and suddenly sunk up to his knees (I later saw where it happened and it would have surprised me too) and really it was likely 50% mud at the most.
In this condition we continued on a climbing path through another forest, until eventually we got to the Oswestry Racecourse Common, where P had parked. This had for centuries been a horseracing course, attended by the local gentry - earls and the like (I think I'm using the term gentry properly anyway). There was a silver cup, money prizes and lots of men lost tremendous amounts of money here (one man is said to have named his son Euphrates after one of his winning horses).
When the lower classes started entering and winning in the early 19th century, and with the arrival of the train making visits to racecourses further afield possible, the course was eventually abandoned. Apparently for a time it was a cafe, and also home to a 'family of molecatchers' (molecatching is a real, well-paid profession here - there was a story about it recently on BBC Radio). Now it's a ruin with picnic tables, so we had lunch here.
Just before I went to set off for some more walking, I asked P to check the weather because it was supposed to be questionable today, but so far everything had been fine. As it turns out, there were severe thunderstorms just a few miles away, and heading directly toward the path.
So I think I'll keep going tomorrow then
So I made the executive decision to end the day there, since I'd rather not drown and with several attractions in the area now was as good a time as any to see them. Even if I was going to walk right past Chirk Castle again tomorrow I decided we should make a visit today because it had an inside part and I had other things I specifically wanted to see tomorrow in Llangollen.
So we got in the car and under blackening skies drove to Chirk Castle. Passing around the most gorgeous wrought iron gates the first thought was that this place was ridiculously full of people - it being the first week of school holidays. The second thought was that it was a very well preserved fortress - low lying with round corner towers up on a hill, it was originally built by powerful Marcher lord Robert de Mortimer in the 13th century, and is actually still occupied by the Myddleton family.
But much of the castle and grounds are open to the public via the National Trust, and so we got our free entrance using our membership, grabbed ice creams, and headed past the small medieval encampment with a chalkboard indicating there would be a 'children's melee' at 2pm and into the castle. As soon as we stepped inside it started downpouring outside. We had a good look around at the swords, family crests, guns, beautiful hurricane glass protected candles, dining room, entertaining room, bedrooms, chapel, etc, all the while glancing outside to see people scurrying under things trying to get out of the rain.
Right as we were about to finish up, it stopped raining and so we stepped outside to bright blue skies and decided to take a look around the manicured grounds. After a brief thousand picture sojourn in the rose garden, we wandered further afield towards some outbuildings when it started to rain again. Luckily the outbuilding had a thick thatched roof and was actually a cafe. So we ordered a coffee and thought we'd wait it out. An hour later, it was still raining like we were in the tropics (but cold).
During what seemed to be a slight, very slight, lull we ran outside to try to get to the car. Unfortunately we were literally as far as possible in the grounds from the it, and as we rounded the final corner the skies opened up again. I kicked off my seriously impractical flip flops and found myself holding them over my head while running barefoot along a gravel path screaming 'oh my god the world's going to end' to no one in particular, as cars plowed through puddles around me and P (being faster than I am, which isn't hard) laughed at me from the car.
I don't care, the gardens were still worth it.
