Leg one starts in a chaotic fashion. My fault.
The plan is to park car one at the Skirrid and walk to car two, which we will park and leave at Llanfihangel Crucorney. Except my memory has misremembered and mispictured the location and I drive too far and on to Pandy where I realise I’ve blown it and turn back.
Attracted – or distracted - by a gaggle of day-glo hikers in a layby, I pull in there only to see on my OS map that this is a section of the Offa’s Dyke Path, not the Beacons Way.
Third time lucky we pull into Llanfihangel Crucorney, ditch Dad’s car and drive back towards the National Trust Car Park at The Skirrid.
Back in the day, Skirrid parking was a quiet layby, but now we hop out in an organised car park with plenty of people about.
True to form, I can’t make the parking machine recognise my NT membership card and give me a ticket, so I leave the card on the dashboard as evidence that I’m an NT member because I certainly ain’t paying.
We set off and at the bottom, grab a photo on a very nicely carved bench that says Skirrid on the back and underneath the seat, 152km to Bethlehem. Bethlehem’s a small village with a popular post office at Christmas time in the west of the National Park further along the route.
The sandstone path zig zags steeply up through woodland. But when we get to the top of the woods, there’s a new gravel path with a sign saying the National Trust will be resowing grass seed and adding fertiliser to the old now fenced-off path. Adding fertiliser? What for? I’m pretty sure they’re not grazing prize continental cattle up here, why not let the dry heathland grasses and flowers recolonise the thin hill soils now it’s protected. I roll my eyes to myself and consider writing a letter.
One of my favourite things about the Skirrid is how it rises almost boundary like, marking the end of the placid hills and woodland of Herefordshire, England and the beginning of the wilder uplands of Wales.
I scan the horizon to the east and tick off my old friends with satisfaction; May Hill with its copse of Scot’s Pines at the top, The Chase at Ross-on-Wye and the wooded ridges of the Wye Valley down to Chepstow, which are currently partly obscured by low rolling cloud.
The view to the west is more interesting. There’s a maze of large hills and flat-topped ridges, with wooded valley sides, interspersed by recently cut pale silage fields and deep green fields of wheat.
From this angle, the Sugar Loaf is a perfect conical volcano and you can’t see its flat sandstone top, typical of the National Park. I can see the thin bracken rows on Bryn Arw, giving away the location of the Stump up For Trees project, where they’ve been planting trees in the bracken and endlessly bashing it to help the trees get away.
We have of course cheated by starting at the Skirrid, but who wants to start walking from Abergavenny up the roads to here? No thanks, let’s just get on the trail.
We’re on the ridge proper now, ancient red sandstone slabs on slabs a feature more famous further on into the National Park at Fan y Big with its popular red sandstone diving boards protruding out over the valley below, giving social media the perfect pic.
The Beacons Way heads downhill here, but we’re going on the trig point. I video Dad walking up to it. It’s empty when we get there and Dad raises his arms aloft, turns and takes a sweeping concert pianist bow as he reaches it. Trig one bagged.
We sit down, legs dangling above the view as a young lad and his equally young dad appear over the edge running to the trig point.
I look at the map to see where the next section of the first half of the Beacons Way leads. Then I locate it in the landscape on the other side of the valley from us, rising up through the woodland and on to a plateau that leads west to Llanthony Priory.
We start walking down the path the man and his son ran up. How on earth did they run up here? For us, It’s 180ft of neck breaking descent, red standstone worn foot holds, like steep steps, guiding our feet down step by step.
A pale misty squall has been mooching along the western horizon for a while, choosing where to unleash itself and it now arrives, delivering a localised hoolie.
I look up at Dad climbing down behind me and wonder how many times on this walk I will be putting him in mildly bonkers situations and how do you judge what’s acceptable for a 75 year old to be doing?
It’s hard not to macro manage: “mind the wet stone, Dad”.
I don’t know why I think I need to say it aloud, it must be annoying. I’d hate someone doing it to me and I resolve to stop. Until next time, anyway.
We wander down through stinking overgrazed, sheep-shit filled fields til we get to a high banked lane.
Suddenly Dad exclaims, “oh no” and clutches his heart and for a moment my own heart lurches in panic.
He’s left the key to his car, where we are walking to in Llanfihangel Crucorney, in my car back in the Skirrid car park.
In fact, I now realise that I saw his key in my car in the centre console, and I even closed the compartment, tucking it carefully in before we locked up and left.
What an absolute pair of plonkers. I get the giggles and we turn round, adding a couple of miles to the trip, but the psychology is so much better than getting all the way to car two and having to turn back.
We walk back along the windy bottom of the Skirrid, to the car park. Pleasingly, we overtake a disunited group of Duke of Edinburgh youth playing tinny pop music through their phones. Small wins.
Leg one has been a lesson in under preparation. Dad forgot water and needs a better raincoat. I didn’t bring any food, which was entirely stupid because anything can happen. Like extending our walk by not being able to get where we were meant to be because we left the key in the car!
It’s good to have made the amateur mistakes on this very forgiving first leg. Must do better next time, we conclude.
Our route, including the double back to go back to car one, whoops!
We parked car one at The Skirrid Car Park
SO 33009 16416
And parked Car 2 at Llanfihangel Crucorney SO 32609 20640
Flora & Fauna: Marsh bedstraw, yellow tormentil, wild thyme, dog rose, ancient beech, ash and oak. Tree Pippits, stonechats, bull finches.
