Offa-long the Dyke #2: Monmouth to Pandy

Up at 6 am and we work round each other well in the tiny twin room at the back of the Mayhill. There’s a lovely view out of the breakfast room window past Lidl and over the bridge into Monmouth’s old grey stones. The view from this table must make it the most popular because the seats are far more worn and saggy than any of the other five tables in the little room where we eat a massive hot breakfast and chat to the breakfast cook.

After breakfast we are off over the bridge and into Wales and the Land of Bilingual Signage. There is a rounded beauty to this sunlit town before we pass under the medieval gate way, over the second bridge and walk along the river under the gleamingly green and sunny tree path.

Our first day of walking is a warm day of crossing stiles and gates that stitch a patchwork of arable land, meadows and livestock fields with populations of varying friendliness: pretty sheep and their humorous farmers, lively Welsh cob horses and fierce medieval White Park cattle.

Gates and hedge-arched lanes go past; stiles and paths and cobnuts pass under our feet; blue skies and green tree branches go overhead. Walking through head-height corn stalks my skin has the over-whelming experience of three-fields’ worth of swishing, blinding, stroking maize leaves.

We loll in a cider apple orchard for lunch, eating our Lidl sandwiches, stretched out on rich green grass.

Llantilio Crossenny, White Castle and Llangattock Lingoed are gone under our feet. We stop for a cuppa in St Cadogs friendly white church that offers make it yourself tea under the bell ropes at the back of the church below the tower.

The land rolls up and down easily under our feet and eventually we slip off the ridge we have walked, into the Stepford Wives community of Wern Gifford which has no street names - just house numbers. I could say every house looks the same, but our destination bed and breakfast, Ty Clawdd boasts by far the best bedding plant display in the village and a welcoming pink cosiness in our sunny room. 

Day one:  no blisters, top-class map reading, and a companionable day of rolling valleys.