Day 60
Hay on Wye to Gladestry: 11 miles
Dedication of the day: To my AirBnB host
Reason: Although her son was having a giant school leaving party, she still dried me off, fed me pizza, gave me a room and also laundered all my clothes. All while constantly telling 13 year olds to take off their shoes when they came inside.
What the heck happened here
So. I'm not going to lie, I barely have any idea what happened today, where I was, what I passed, the history of anything. That's because it was raining sooooo hard.
The first thing that happened was my hostel hosts dropped me off in the rain in Hay-on-Wye to restart walking. The second thing that happened was I realized I still had my room key. The third thing that happened was that a giant van drove through a giant puddle and drenched me entirely from the waist down, as I walked back into town to try to drop the key off at a local store so the hostel could get it later.
So things started quite well.
As I left Hay-on-Wye, I kind of wished I'd seen more of it. P and I had been here last year and I'd wanted to look at more of the bookstores the town is known for - but today really didn't seem to be the day for browsing down booksellers.
So off I went, through some drizzle and along the river. As I looked around I noticed sheep huddled together under bushes and trees - never a good sign. I also noticed ominous dark clouds with even more ominous giant opaque gray sheets of rain falling out of them - so much rain the ground was really obscured.
Given my plans for Offa's Dyke were pretty much set in stone - I had a place to stay in Gladestry booked tonight and that was it - I had to just grin and bear it. So I went on, and the cloud got closer and closer, until finally I basically walked into a wall of water.
Having learned my lesson yesterday, I tried to stand under a tree to keep at least a bit of the rain off. But it was well and truly pouring. Luckily, given that my backpack's rain cover was one of the things P failed to bring when we met in Cardiff (because really who needs a rain cover in Wales, right?), I had taken a garbage bag from the hostel and fashioned it into a very classy rain cover before I'd gone out this morning.
So here I was, huddled under a tree, with 10 miles in front of me and hoping that the garbage bag on my back would keep the rain out of most of my stuff. After it showed little sign of easing, I just continued on. And on and on and on.
Like I said, I'm not entirely sure what happened - mostly I spent my time in my head calculating wind direction, and whether if I walked on this side of the road or that one the hedges/trees/fence would protect me from the rain blowing sideways/crossways/straight into my face. Hedgerows are surprisingly great to have when rain is blowing sideways by the way.
The best churches in Wales
Eventually I ran across two other soaked ladies going the other way. We had a fine chat about their walking the Path, and they told me that there was coffee available in the church at Newchurch. That sounded lovely. I was again told about this coffee-filled church by the next group of people I met, who appeared to be jogging up behind me at a ridiculous walking pace. After a short conversation with them, where I was in the process of telling one of them that I'd walked 550 miles so far, when another of them cut me off, snorting derisively 'Not on the Offa's Dyke Path you didn't' as though I were a complete idiot who didn't have any idea what she was talking about, I decided to let them just walk on ahead of me. But not, of course, before quickly and equally condescendingly retorting 'Well obviously not. Like I said, I started on the Wales Coast Path, and now am walking Offa's Dyke. 550 miles.'
So when I got to the church with the hot drinks, and this group was inside it, I made an effort to talk mostly to the other two people, who were perfectly nice. And ultimately the third guy wasn't so bad either. I guess.
But let me dwell on the church for a bit. Where I was was St. Mary's church, while the church isn't that old it has a 10th century font and 14th century bells - the oldest in Wales. There's a lot of information about visits by 19th century clergyman Francis Kilvert, who's known for his diaries depicting rural life at the time, and who was enchanted with St. Mary's Rector's daughter Emmeline. Apparently there's a particularly saucy portion of his diary where he runs across a bunch of young girls in Newchurch castrating lambs (just like I used to do in my misspent youth - nothing like a good lamb castration), and he was ever so relieved that Emmeline wasn't among them. Sadly she died when she was only 13, and her grave is marked in the graveyard.
But regardless of this, the main point of interest about this church is that it has laid out a full spread of coffee, tea, drinks, water and biscuits for passing walkers. There are instructions and a request for donations (of course you donate when you've been out in the rain for 3 hours and someone's kindly lef you a cup of coffee!), but it really seemed like such a nice act of charity to do something like this for people. Almost like the purpose of a Christian church, some might say.
In any case, the three other walkers and I all had our various damp clothing laid out along the pews, and warmed our hands on coffee and tea and had a few biscuits. After a half hour, the other crew left, and I proceeded to read all the info I could find about Emmeline, the church and the area. After taking a few pictures I walked back out into the rain.
No but really, rain
What I'd realized in the church was that although my outer clothing and my shoes were wet, pretty much my waterproofing (besides the shoes) had held up pretty well. Mostly besides my face, hands and feet I was pretty dry, and I checked my classy garbage bag covered backpack and that seemed fine too.
Possibly realizing he hadn't tried hard enough, the rain god decided that the remained of my walk would be absolutely unbearable. The walking itself would have been entirely pleasant - a nice ramble over a few fields and hills - but I've literally never seen rain like this outside of the tropical rainy season in countries Cambodia or Tanzania. It was incredible.
I was just starting to worry I might drown when I got to Gladestry. Unfortunately, I was staying at an AirBnB and I kind of didn't want to show up at their door looking like a drowned rat, and so wanted to find a place to clean up a bit. I tried the Inn but it was closed. Then I noticed that once again there was a sign for tea and coffee at the church. So up the hill and in I went.
After once again untangling myself from my gear and leaving it about the empty pews of this much larger church of St. Mary's, I made myself another coffee, had a biscuit, and read about the 900 year history of this St. Mary's. I was trying to rearrange my things so they were dripping on stone rather than any wood when the handle on the giant wooden door turned, opened, and I proceeded to scare the living daylights out of a woman who'd come to clean. She screamed a little actually.
Then I explained myself, she explained herself, we laughed a little bit and chatted for a while. In particular, she said something that had been running through my head when trying to thinking about how nice it was that a church would leave out coffee and cakes for walkers - she said something along the lines of 'churches being a true place of refuge.' And on a day like today, she was absolutely right. But if you think about old pilgrimages or the role of churches generally in taking care of the poor - having an open door policy for people to come in and get warm, and maybe have some coffee, gives a feeling of actual Christian charity - not something you necessarily come across in real life every day.
Anyway, I started to feel guilty about all my things being everywhere, so I packed everything up, carefully avoiding the bat droppings (did I mention the bat droppings? All the coffee and cakes had to stay covered because bats lived in the rafters) and trudged back out into the rain. I wandered up a hill to where I thought my AirBnB was, knocked on the front door, which didn't work, knocked on the back door, and was greeted by 20 13 year olds sitting around a table eating pizza and playing on their phones.
To her tremendous credit, one of the first things I heard my host say to these children was that they would not be spending any more time on their phones for the rest of the party. The second thing she said was to take of my wet shoes, and then she offered me tea, pizza and eventually some sort of pork rind from the table. She'd previously told me her son was having a school leaving party (I think that's either summer vacation or leaving middle school) so none of this was a surprise.
The mother eventually sent all the children outside to play (which considering the amount of rain was pretty impressive) and watching them from inside via a series of windows was something like watching a Benny Hill chase scene. There was a toy four wheeler they were all piling on and some kids would drive one way, then some others would run screaming the other direction, then someone would amble through with something else, etc, etc.
In the meantime, she got me settled, dried and fed (she was in full on mothering mode and I think having me there was just like having another 13 year old to take care of) in short order, we chatted for a while during which time I couldn't help but notice she seemed to be my hair twin, and eventually I was escorted to a basement apartment where I took yet another bath.
A day of refuges.
