3 castles in Wales

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We struck it lucky with a bright blue skied weekend for our 3 castles walk in Wales. Our train departed from Paddington at 7.45am so we were up and out the door by 6.30am. The journey was just over 4hrs with a fast change in Newport. By fast I mean we had 2mins, so we have to run up and over to get to the platform sliding into the carriage before it pulled out. Our host for the weekend Paul was waiting for us on arrival to drive us to the start point. The days hike was around 11 miles and took us up and over a few hills, so it was not a stroll in the park. The country side looked glorious under the blue skies, the patch work of green fields were picture perfect! It took as a while to get to the first village and not knowing this was where the first castle was we walked right by it. It wasn’t until we were topping the hill leaving the village and turned to take a photo did we notice the castle. Apart from the missing signs to the castle the signing along the trail was rather good. It was much needed as it was only on the way up on the train that we realised the map we had purchased only showed 1/3^rd of the trail. In fact you need a total of 3 OS maps to encompass the entire walk. We sat on the hill top and had our rolls for lunch before walking on. We passed lots of farm animals; sheep, cows, horses and of course lambs. As we were approaching the end of the days walk we came across a farmer who was helping with lambing and there was a sweet wee thing had been born only a couple of minutes before we arrived. After watching it wobble around and having a good chat with the farmer we were on our way again. We were extremely close to the English boarder, with England on the other side of the river we were walking along. We were extremely tired by the time we top the final rise and saw Skinfrief castle in the distance. Having poked our noses around we headed for the local pub while we waited to get picked up. That evening we stayed in a quaint little village and guest house called the Old Refectory. It had wonderful views of the valley we would walk across the next day. We had dinner at a local pub, with a great name for itself called the Hardwick. It had a great menu with local produce galore. It was a really good meal. It was another fabulous day the following morning. And after a hearty cooked breakfast we were dropped at our start point which was the old coach trail to London. The final days walk was only 3 or so hours. After near exhaustion on day one we decided to take a slightly earlier train home. To be honest we couldn’t walk much further than those 3hrs as we both had aching legs.

Only a few moments after setting out on day 2 a wee puppy dog started to follow us. A bit later on as we were trying to protect it from larger dogs and send it home we somehow took a wrong turn and very much lost the signs. Yes, I am blaming a dog for us getting lost! We ended up having to walk around the country lanes for 90mins or so to get to the final castle. White Castle was the grandest of all three and offered excellent views down into the valleys. To complete our weekend walk we took Offa’s Dyke path another 2 or so miles back to our guest house. Interestingly way back when King Offa decided he didn’t want the Welsh in England so he built this dyke stretching the length of Wales. Our weekend ended well with being able to catch an earlier train back London with no penalty. It was great to get out of London on such a fantastic weekend in such a pretty part of the country.

Photos

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