Day 58
Pandy to Llanthony Priory: 5 miles
Dedication: To my poor, poor, poor legs
Reason: I think they've suffered enough
So today wasn't supposed to be about the walking, and it ended up being less about the walking than I'd intended. When I was figuring out how to through hike Offa's Dyke, I was limited by two things 1) how far I could actually walk in a day and 2) accommodation actually available within that range. The problem with this section is that Pandy to Hay-on-Wye is farther than I'm usually comfortable walking in a day (over a mountain) but there wasn't anything really right in the middle (due to the middle being a mountain ridge).
But then there was Llanthony Priory. Although only a short distance from Pandy, it would still involve a several hundred meter climb up to the ridge, then a few mile walk along the ridge, and then several hundred meter drop back down to the hamlet. But. . . When you got there you could stay in the actual priory. Because it's a hotel and pub now. That you can sleep in. So I thought that sounded cool and decided to check it out.
But first, I had to get out of Pandy
OK. The B and B I stayed in was perfectly fine. I liked my tiny single room, the breakfast was nice, even though I was stuck with two other guests, one of whom couldn't seem to respond to anything I had to say or formulate conversation in really any meaningful manner. Until of course he decided to talk to me and our female host about a video he was watching (while I'd been trying to make polite conversation with him, which was lovely btw), where the oh-so-hysterical punch line was that men make money so women can spend it recklessly. I asked what about the women who made money that men spend, as our hostess seemed to have the same fake smile on that I did. He just kind of stared at me. I'm really unclear why this was the one thing he seemed to want to talk to me about - in particular since the only other thing he mentioned was that he was travelling here as a tag a long vacation while his girlfriend was here for work made his whole premise seem hypocritical.
Anyway I got the strong sense he didn't like me being there by myself or something. But who knows, maybe guys just love talking about why they think women are idiots to me, I seem to often have that effect on people.
So basically I was ready to leave. The host and hostess gave me a small slip of paper showing me how I could use rights of way through neighboring properties to get back to the path, rather than having to go all the way back down their driveway. This seemed like a great idea, since going down the driveway meant going back up the hill I was already on.
Turns out I was really, really wrong. This was in fact a terrible idea. A really, really, really bad idea. Although this is an existing right of way due to agreement with the neighbors, the host had hinted that parts of it were now planted and so the path wasn't immediately obvious. As I found myself battling through undergrowth for the next hour and a half, completely lost as to where the gate I was supposed to be finding was, but just across a barbed wire fence that I couldn't climb over from the path, this was one of those instances where there might be right of way, but there was no path to follow. And I was walking in trousers that exposed my lower legs to basically every stinging plant that Britain has to offer.
When I finally gave up on the '15 minute to the trail' path an hour and a half in, my legs were covered in welts and itched and burned nearly everywhere. I walked all the way back down, and walked all the way back up on the path - I found the gate I was supposed to have come out of - and though it was pretty much exactly where I'd been aiming for, the other side was such a tangle of trees and undergrowth I was right to have turned back - there was no way I was going to have gotten through that.
Hmmm. A GPS would have been awfully nice
Cursing and wincing under my breath, I made my way on the long walk up to the ridge. Excited about the long views I'd be seeing over Wales and the surrounding Brecon Beacons National Park, I failed to notice the fog creeping in. Pretty much as soon as I got to the higher, panoramic reaches of the ridge, visibility dropped to about 10 feet. All I could hear was sheep eerily bleating in the distance, and all I could see was the occasional sheep in the mist drifting out of the fog in front of me, only to be incredibly startled and run away, hopefully not blindly off a cliff, since we were at several hundred meters of elevation.
My thoughts went mostly to navigation, and the course we'd taken at Plas-y-Brenin. While the trail was straight and easy to follow, I'd need to make sure I didn't miss the turn off in the fog. Because I didn't have the GPS I'd wanted to take with me. Because, funny story, sometimes one's very kind boyfriend can do very stupid things. Like, when he very kindly agrees he'll be your resupply train every so often, and so you pack the car in May with everything you think you'll need for the entire hike so he doesn't have to think about what to bring because clearly that won't go well. But then his parents come to visit. And he needs space in the car for them to sit in. So he takes your bags out. And on preparing to meet you in Cardiff consciously says to himself 'Oh, L said that when she switches to Offa's Dyke from the Wales Coast Path she's just going to give me most of her stuff and use a smaller bag, so I don't need to put these bags back in the car'. So he doesn't put them back in. And you have exactly planned out what you want for this particular hike and he arrives in Cardiff without those things. Like a GPS. In case there's fog. And you happen to be in the mountains. And there are no landmarks. And no civilization. You know, in case that happens. Like was happening right now.
So. Wondering whether P was hoping to come into a non-existent inheritance by plotting how to kill me in the mountains via lack of GPS, I used my Plas y Brenin training skills to use my compass, my watch and my OS map to keep track of where I was, even going so far as helping a group of kids who were clearly lost pinpoint exactly where they were on a map. It actually worked fairly well, and within 2 minutes of thinking I'd reached where the turnoff should be - there it was.
Llanthony Priory
Making my way down to the Priory, I realized how far up I'd been - since it took quite a while despite the path down from the Haterall Ridge being relatively steep. Apparently the fog was a low lying cloud, because eventually I reached at least an elevation where there was at least some visibility - and caught sight of the Priory, the hamlet and the Valley (the Vale of Ewyas).
In the early 12th century two hermits - William de Lacy and Ernisius (hermits apparently are allowed to take one word names like Prince) - gathered a small group of followers and built a small church here. When times got more settled in the latter part of the century, they built larger buildings, occupied until the 16th century dissolution of the monasteries. In the 18th century it was bought by a man trying and failing to live like a 'country gentleman' - although he built a manor house within the ruins, and tried to improve the land, ultimately he lost too much money to continue. The ruins became a popular tourist site, and have been shored up to prevent further collapses as happened in the 18th and 19th centuries.
When I arrived, I was shown immediately to my room in the hunting lodge portion of the ruins. Although the floor sloped so much that when I tried to take off my sock standing up I almost fell over, it was pretty great. Though very spartan in its decor (attempting to maintain an aura of what it would have looked like as a priory), the room had a comfortable bed, thick walls, and most importantly overlooked the middle of the actual priory. Once the fog cleared up I had wonderful views. After having a drink in the tiny basement bar and staring at the vaulted ceilings, I wandered through the ruins a bit more. Not as big as Tintern, but more left than Strata Florida, I was still shocked that they let people not just wander through here, but stay in a hotel here.
Since my walk hadn't been very long, I had a lot of the day left here. There not being much to the hamlet, I decided to make use of the fact that the hotel had a bathtub available, hoping that taking a bath would ease the burning pain in my legs. As it turned out, this was the second time today I was absolutely, entirely wrong. In fact, bathing made the pain in my legs almost immeasurably worse. After I got out of the bath, I was literally in excruciating pain from knee to ankle. It felt like someone was holding a thousand moving matches against my skin, while simultaneously poking me with a thousand moving needles. It was like each of the nerve endings in my lower legs was individually pulsating with an incredible burning sensation.
I tried to wander around the Priory again, hoping it would wear off - it didn't (though I was enjoying better and better views after the weather cleared). I tried moisturizer, to no effect. I scratched them, to no effect. I had dinner in the very interesting dining room (thankfully the hotel caters to walkers, and basically provided breakfast, dinner, and a packed lunch the next day as well as entertainment in the form of the basement bar), but was really gritting my teeth even trying to respond to the waiter. I decided retiring to the bar with the few others around wasn't going to be a good idea, so I went up to my room and read 50% of the book The Man in the High Tower that the hotel had lying around. Thus began the trail of half read books that I had to leave behind on the Offa's Dyke Path.
When I finally went to bed, I realized very quickly that I had to sleep on the left hand side of the bed, because I'd probably roll out of the right hand side given the incline. Of course, given the fact that I couldn't sleep because my legs were on fire, that really didn't matter. So I lay there, awake, hoping that in the morning I'd wake up to find myself still in a 12th century priory but able to enjoy it without thinking I might at any moment find myself screaming in pain on the ground.
My low expectations were met, anyway.
