Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011: Offa's Dyke, Knighton
Bob: One of our goals in setting up this trip had been to walk on a trail along the border of Wales and England to the East. Since it wasn't raining and we had a decent chance of a nice day, we headed eastward after breakfast and drove northeast to Knighton where our Pathfinder Guide had listed just such a walk. In fact, Walk #8, entitled "Knighton", really featured a path that led right along the route of Offa's Dyke. Offa was King of Mercia from A.D. 757 to 796, and Mercia was the strongest kingdom in England. While Offa was busy trying to subdue the other English Kings, the Welsh raided and took possession of some of the western parts of Mercia. Apparently deeply offended (infuriated?) by this, Offa decided to build a wall all along the border with Wales to keep the Welsh out. The wall ended up extending from "sea to sea", a distance of around 170-odd miles, and was the largest Saxon construction project ever completed. Although the official Offa's Dyke path supposedly parallels the route of the wall for its entire distance, we were only going to walk along it far enough to get a taste of what it was like. We parked at the long-term "Park and Pay" in central Knighton, and then used both the GPS's depiction of where we were parked plus the map in the Pathfinder Guide to join up with the route described in the guide. As it turned out, we only had to walk about a block and a half up the street before we saw a landmark that was mentioned in the guide. |
Monika: For today's walk we had chosen one on the east side of Wales, that is on the border with England. In the 8th century, King Offa of the Mercians ordered a dyke built from sea to sea, to stop invasions from the Welsh. In the intervening 12 centuries, that defensive line has been converted into a walking path, the Offa's Dyke Path. I had read about it at home, when I checked out walking paths in Wales. When we found out that one of the walks in the book we had found at the B&B actually traversed about 2 miles along the path, we thought that this 6 mile walk would be great. Our walk started in the little town of Knighton, that is on the border between England and Wales (the train station is in England, everything else in Wales. We found a nice parking space in a long term Pay and Display parking lot. Since the fee for over 4 hours was only 2.50 pounds, I was not too upset, but getting the ticket involved actually entering the last three numbers (or letters as in our case) of the license plate, and that was a hassle (Who memorizes the license plates of their rental cars??). But I did manage to finally get the ticket and set off on our walk. |
Bob: Once we knew we had the right place, we turned to follow the indicated route up the hill and right along the course of the ancient dyke. The climb was steady but only moderately steep, so we didn't have to stop to get our breath too often. At first I was disappointed because we were following a farm fence along the site of the ancient wall, but aside from the fact that there was one path on the "English" side of it and another parallel path across the fence on the "Welsh" side of it, the fence was anything but impressive. In fact, it looked like any other wire farm fence topped with a string of barbed wire except that there was kind of a low mound running along with the line of posts that maybe raised them 6 inches to a foot higher than an everyday, run-of-the-mill farm pasture fence. |
Monika: We first climbed up to the height of Offa's Dyke, and then started walking along the ridge. At first it was not very noticeable. It was interesting so, to look at the land to the east, England, and to the west, Wales. In both directions we saw fields divided by hedges with sheep in the fields. Not really that much difference. |
Bob: But as we continued over the crest of the hill, the dyke became truly huge. The mound part became at least a 10-12 foot tall rampart of earth, in front of which was a ditch at least four feet deep. To imagine the dyke as it would have been in Offa's day, you have to consider that 1200+ years of weathering would have assuredly reduced both the height of the rampart and the depth of the ditch, so the defensive earthwork would have been noticeably larger. You also have to consider that back in Offa's day the top of the rampart would have had a log palisade or some other form of structure at the top to shelter the defenders in the case of a Welsh attack. The labor to build such a structure was enormous, especially compared to the size of the human population in Mercia at that time. Apparently each able-bodied man in that area of Mercia was required to build a section of the dyke of 4 and 1/2 feet, but the men worked in teams, no doubt to facilitate the transfer of huge amounts of earth and rock from the ditch up to the rampart. So the dyke was built, but like the Great Wall of China that preceded it, I'd would be very surprised if it was really effective in keeping out the Welsh raiders. |
Monika: But after about a mile, the Dyke was quite a landmark. At times the ditch and dyke were about 10 feet high. Up on top the dyke trees had taken up residence, and at some points the stinging nettles where in the ditch. We avoided those parts. |
Bob: After walking along the dyke for a couple of miles, we left the official path as it crossed a rural road, and instead turned right on the road to loop back around the ridge to Knighton. Walking along a rural lane was noticeably easier than hiking across the fields and fences up on the ridge top, but our view was correspondingly restricted by the hedgerows that rose at least head high on either shoulder of the lane. Every now and then, however, we could get a nice view of the valley below and the pretty patchwork of rural fields and pastures. |
Monika: We walked past a wheat field and I tried getting a picture of the wheat waving in the wind. We finally came to a lane, where we turned away from Offa's Dyke and back towards the town of Knighton. It was a few miles along the lane, and at one point we saw a tree that had started to turn color, autumn could not be far away. We finally turned back into a field, that led onto a wooden path, that led back into town. |
Bob: Once we returned to Knighton, we continued on into the city to visit the Offa's Dyke Centre, which featured a lot of exhibits with historical information about the dyke. The problems preserving such a huge, earthen structure from gradual deterioration and collapse were delineated in a clear and concise manner. But I was also interested in an 1851 map of the village of Knighton and a current aerial picture of the town. The buildings in the town had clearly multiplied, but the roads and basic outline of the town had stayed pretty much the same. We wandered about the town a bit and had a simple lunch at a bakery that included two tables with chairs over by the windows. Monika had pizza and I had a small meat and potato pie, followed by a small steak and kidney pie, and we both shared a Coke. |
Monika: We thought it would be fun to walk through the town, and I wanted to see the Offa's path visitor center to get some more information on the path. The visitor's center was at the edge of town, and was quite informative. It showed a nice map of the entire path and gave some of the history. Filled with knowledge, we now needed to be filled with nourishment. A tearoom seemed to be full of people, but a bakery had still some hot food and a table to sit at. Bob had some meat pies, and I had a piece of pizza. This was actually a thick slice of bread, topped with sauce, ham, pineapple, and cheese. Very tasty. Thus satisfied, we kept walking through town back to the car. |
Bob: On the way back to our B&B we stopped off at an Aldi store we had spotted whilst driving out, and stocked up on groceries for our evening snacks. I was also pleased to find a watch band repair kit that included not only two leather bands (black and brown) that exactly fit my watch, but also a small but cleverly designed tool for popping the little pins and rivets in and out when installing the band. The entire kit was only 4 pounds or about $ 6, and after we returned home I immediately used the tool to replace the band on my watch (one loop had broken). We finished the book we were reading--it had a happy ending fortunately--and selected pictures to upload to facebook to show our friends and family what we were up to. Unfortunately we became so engrossed in that project that we completely forgot to update our journal before we went to bed! |
Monika: Back in the car we passed a tractor full of hay, and of course, the obligatory sheep and cattle in a field. On the way up, we had spied an Aldi and a Tesco store near one of the bigger towns. We did find them again on our way back and stopped at the Aldi. They had some low fat cheese, pastrami, and rolls for Abendessen. Bob found a replacement watchband for his watch but then got into such an uncontrollable sneezing fit, that he left the rest of the shopping to me, so I could pick up a bottle of beer and a bottle of wine. After the successful shopping stop, we decided to take a different route home, to check out some of the local roads to figure out which one would be the best to take to "get out of Dodge" (American idiom: leave town) on Friday. I was surprised to find one major road had a cattle grid, before some free range sheep. I mean really, a road with speed limit of 60 mph having sheep wandering around! Luckily, we found, we could avoid that one on Friday when we had to drive to Southampton. Back at the B&B we checked out email and read but did not have energy for much else. |
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