Eventually, we peel off our reluctance and get back on our path because this sunny day is leading us across green hills and rolling valleys and fields once we have come out on to the open after following the high path above the Wye under the trees.
The guidebook says that the trees in Bettws Dingle have been cut and devastated but fortunately they all seem to have regrown by the time we get there, shading us from the hot sun (in Wales?!) towards the middle of the day.
We meet a solo walker coming the other way who takes the time to recommend St Mary’s church in Newchurch where you can make your own tea, but also takes the time to complain that someone before her had eaten all the biscuits. Undaunted by this disastrous situation, we stop to explore St Mary’s, only to be confronted by the alarming sight of the local vicar: youthful, bleached blond hair, (fake?) tanned legs, wearing conventional black and dog collar with tight black Lycra bike pants. He is also hopeless at making tea.
Caro and I sit outside in the graveyard, our boots propped disrespectfully on a table tomb while we eat our lunch.
Having paid homage to the Reverend Francis Kilvert of diary fame and respects at the grave of 14-year-old Emmeline, who captured Rev Kilvert’s unknowingly pedophile heart, we head to Hergest Ridge.
Hergest Ridge is a lonely and weird high land of lost trig points and random stone piles, populated by beautiful horses and foals. We eat ginger biscuits and stare out across the plains. Whatever did Mike Oldfield see in this land that he set to music? Was it the broad sheep cropped grassland? The tiny plantation of monkey puzzle trees rearing above the bracken? The unexpected descent into the town arboretum?
Before we can decide, we have reached the edge of Kington and stumbled straight to the bright red front door of The Benchmark BandB.
Craft worker/artist Adam and his three-legged Bengal striped tabby Benny have turned an almost vertical space of a house into an eccentric and attractive stopove for limited numbers of hikers. I can barely tear myself away from discussion with Adam about dyes, yarns, stitches, rush-seating, alum and mordants. Eventually I do, only to find that poor Caro has encountered yet another impossible to fathom British shower system that requires a master’s in plumbing to operate and even she cannot figure out how to turn off the water. We solve it with two good brains and handy rough towel and go to eat a luxurious dinner in the trendy modern interior of The Swan across the road where the two staff must be the hardest-working and most efficient hospitality workers in the entire UK. I drink an enormous glass of red wine, but feel too hazy to regret it afterwards.
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