Day 56
Bigsweir Bridge to Monmouth: 11 miles
Food I wish I had on me: Bacon
Reason: I feel like it would have made me more threatening to the forest pig
Goodbye Castle, Hello Copperworks
So after a quick breakfast at the castle, where I listened to P's story of his first-ever visit to a hostel ("No, P, it isn't normal protocol for the weird old man in the other bed to wake up early, pack his stuff, and before he leaves turn around and shout out 'Gentlemen! May the road ever rise up to meet you'" and "Yes P, it sounds like several of the men in your dorm had medical conditions. Loud ones.") I continued on my way, and P continued home, via a detour to Cardiff to helpfully pick up my computer.
Oh, I don't remember if I mentioned that several keys on my laptop stopped working (and let me tell you blogging without a functioning spacebar is the new pushing a rock up a hill for eternity) and I had to bring it to the one Apple Genius Bar in Wales, which of course was in Cardiff. I won't go into the details, but I have to say I highly recommend going into a Mac store in hiking gear and with your laptop wrapped in a pair of your moose patterned pajama pants shoved into a dry bag. Also telling them you don't have a phone and without the computer there's no way to reach you. It's a real hoot.
Anyway, P was off on another of my errands, and I was off to walk Offa's Dyke for the next week or two with minimal gear. I was still really enjoying the woods and I realized I was walking pretty fast when I got to the river crossing at Redbrook in no time. A cute little village in . . . England. I think it was England, I'm starting to get confused with the border.
Regardless, now-tiny Redbrook was once a massive copper-smelting town, supplying copper for the Royal Mint, and then later becoming a tinplate town. Although it has a proud industrial heritage, I was also happy to see the informational sign talk about the toll that business would take on the workers. Not only could you hear the noise for miles around, but the byproducts of smelting copper were arsenic and sulfur, which hung in a giant yellow cloud over the town and killed off a lot of the vegetation. I'm still on a bit of a kick about how people always picture industry in the past as being somehow idyllic, when in fact the air. was full. of arsenic.
Oh God I hope that's not a Predator
On my map the path went right through a National Trust site called 'Navy Temple' and 'the Kymin' so I thought I'd give that a whirl. After climbing a small forested hill, I ended up at. . . a temple to the navy. I suddenly realized I really didn't understand the British fascination with the navy, which obviously during their empire building was THE big thing, to put it mildly. In this case, 20+ miles inland, the public raised money to build a giant square temple dedicated to 16 of Britain's most famous admirals, and memorializing several key battles. This giant memorial on a hill is right next to an odd round tower, built by several country gentleman who wanted a beauty spot where they could picnic without getting wet - but apparently the project languished somewhat and is smaller than originally planned. That of course didn't stop Lord Nelson from dining here at least once.
I'm kind of fuzzy on the details because I was hot, sweaty, and because I had to clear out while the National Trust volunteer in charge of the place put on period costume to get ready for a promo. Said costume looked far too warm, but he seemed to be enjoying himself so I let it go.
Meanwhile, a large group of very loud under 16 year old boys wearing the same shirts had formed outside the roundhouse, and appeared to be preparing to walk down to Monmouth. Eager to not be stuck immediately behind them, I literally started running down the path ahead of them. I thought I was quite clever. Then I got to the fields.
In a bit of a daze, I was loping rather quickly down a hillside field when suddenly I was jolted suddenly awake. I wasn't sure by what because I wasn't paying attention. Then I heard a giant tremendously loud rumbling snort coming from the forest that edged the field I was in. I stopped dead still and listened. I heard a few branches crack. Then I heard the giant 5 second long snort again. It was actually terrifying.
I was just beginning to form the idea in my head that maybe there was a boar in the woods when suddenly I heard galloping and crashing and ferns being crushed by cloven hooves (ok I didn't hear what kind of hooves it had but when do you get to use the word cloven?) and the sounds were coming straight at me.
My primal reactions clearly lean strongly toward flight versus fight during stressful situations. I'm possibly the slowest person on earth, but after what must have been a short adrenaline filled blackout I suddenly found myself running flat out up a hill in a burst of speed such as my poor body has never seen. After I'd crashed through and securely locked the gate behind me, I turned around to see that there was, in fact, a giant flipping pig chasing me up the hill.
Because of course there was a giant flipping pig chasing me up the hill. I was clearly walking way on the other side of a field from it doing absolutely nothing threatening such that it had to come crashing out of it's forest lair to attack me. I can only assume the farmer who owned it had trained it as an attack pig. Or that all farm animals just hate me.
I took a look at my options, and was just thinking that maybe I should divert along an alternate road when I heard the under-16s coming back up the path. Hmmm. I looked back to the field and the pig had disappeared back to its lair. And that, my friends, is how I probably became 'That Crazy American Lady Who Asked if She Could Walk in the Middle of our School Group Because She Thought an Imaginary Pig that None of Us Saw or Heard was Chasing Her' to the children of Monmouth. But I have pictures so Hah!
Monmouth
Eventually, I did actually get away from the pig and made it safe and sound to Monmouth. Where I found out all about Lady Llangattock's (sure, let's call it healthy) fascination with Admiral Lord Nelson. She collected everything she could find of his - sword, book, Bible, telescope, etc - and now it's all housed in a small museum in Monmouth. Nearby is a statue to her son Charles Stewart Rolls, co-founder of Rolls Royce, that describes his motoring and airplane accomplishments, prior to his death at a young age when the tail of his Wright Flyer fell off during a demonstration.
Monmouth almost had too much history for me to really follow along. When I got to the 13th century Monmow Bridge - the last remaining fortified bridge in Britain - I saw a nice history wheel thing and tried to process it but failed pretty miserably. One key point that stuck is that this is where, in the 12th century Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote 'The History of Kings of Britain', introducing King Arthur to the world, and placing him and his court squarely in Wales.
Since then clearly other things have happened - including the carving of a 19th century tombstone with 'Here Lies John Renie' in a series of repeated letters in a square such that that same phrase can be read 40,000 ways upwards, backwards, downwards, etc. Unfortunately I completely failed to see said tombstone and I'm still kind of ticked about that.
Farmhouse B and B
I was actually staying outside of Monmouth at a farmhouse B and B, so I made my way past some lovely houses on a road edged with what I assume are drainage ditches the size of small canals, through fields where I could see vast fields full of purple flowers, past inexplicable rugby huddles of sheep that I didn't understand at all, and eventually to a B and B right on the trail (which of course was awesome).
It was here that I began to learn that (1) accomodations on Offa's Dyke Path understand that you are likely to be gross when arriving at their homes and pretend not to notice (2) trying to wash socks and expecting them to dry overnight is a futile exercise in this country and (3) that former Welsh primary school teachers who become farmers despite the fact that 'women weren't supposed to inherit the farm' are awesome hosts, and also, apparently, run successful farms and have a lot of motivational stories even for ladies not running farms. Whenever I hear stories like this I'm always reminded that these women are not that old, and being told your choices of work were primary school teacher or nurse was not a thing of ancient history.
It was in this mindset that I retired to my room to watch a lovely sunset over the farmland from my window, while also watching the movie Mamma Mia for the first time and deciding I had no idea why Pierce Brosnan was even involved in such a project.
I feel like that veered slightly off topic.
But seriously, what was he doing in a movie based on a musical based on the songs of ABBA playing an American? At least I think he was playing an American, it was hard to tell due to what sounded to me like an oddly British American accent that I really couldn't place in one or the other country.
Anyway, Wales. Wales Wales Wales. Not ABBA and Sweden and Greece and Pierce Brosnan. Wales.
