So off to Herefordshire with SPR today. Not quite sure what the route will be but happy to just follow today. A really slow journey and we stop off at a car park at the bottom of Credenhill. Andrew the other walker and myself walk up the hill as we’ve been instructed to do. Steve wants up to go up to be able to look out over the SAS Camp. We come back down sooner than he’d expected and looking at the map later we could have continued up to a hill fort. A quick trip in the car to the start of our walk proper.
We are going to be walking along the Wye Valley Walk today, into Hereford.
We are in the heart of an apple growing area and the first part of our walk goes alongside trees ladened with fruit. These apples are often converted to cider, I try one and it has a good taste – already feeling quite hungry as we left Millets at 8 am and we have set off on our walk at 12.15!! several different varieties of apples are growing as we proceed through the orchards.
The farmers has sent us on a well labelled detour but we then get back on route. Some quite interesting properties around and I notice later on the map that we’re near the intersection of two Roman Roads and an old Roman town. Pleasant countryside but nothing dramatic . We cross some fields through herds of cows and Steve goes off to find a trig point.
We come to a very old orchard , not sure if these apples are ever actively picked but we do notice lots of mistletoe up in the trees . Reminds me of the apple trees in the school grounds which always had an abundance of this festive plant – I’m not sure I took sufficient commercial advantage of this resource!!
We do eventually get down to the river which is quite wide. In several places we notice stick debris up quite high in branches which are overhanging or next to the river. We weren’t sure what they were- seemed an odd place for nests – and then we found some ‘flood’ measures and realised that the height they were suggesting could possibly/ probably mean that this was placed there by fast flowing flood water. Some of these ‘nests’ were high up which is quite a frightening thought.
This was about 4/5 metres above the water.
We spot one very big old house up on a hill and get the impression from the size and species of trees alongside the river that these have been planted as part of park land . Not long and we spot a large bridge over the river, this in fact where we are going to cross and we are nearly in Hereford.
Just before we cross we go past a sports field with primary school children playing Tag Rugby. I am able to explain the rules to the other two and we watch the absolute enthusiasm of the participants.
The old bridge into the city soon becomes apparent, we are going to climb up onto the road at this point and finish out walk at a car park where Jane is waiting. We’ve only been out walking for 3.25 hours and we’ve stopped for lunch!
We do turn to go back into the city to look for a map shop which it turned out was no longer there and we have a look around the cathedral which was quite magnificent. The coffee and walnut cake was good as well!
Good to go somewhere different but a whole day to walk 7 miles is not necessarily good use of time , luckily not quite such a long journey back but considerably more time travelling than walking.
Marion's 50 Walk Challenge 