Day 4 - The Hendre to Llangattock Lingoed

Beer drunk: 2 pints
Distance walked: 19km, Time taken: 6 1/2 hours,
Ascents: 488m, Descents: 431m

Today was a mild, sunny day - again.  So far I’ve been lucky with the weather.  The countryside around here is very pretty - rolling hills, farmland and small patches of woodland.  However, it is no fun to navigate through fields.  It’s ok if you can see the gate/stile you need to aim for but often the field is too large or too hilly and you can’t.  The best you can do is head in a mostly straight line and hope you will hit the right spot when you get the the next fence.  It not, then you have to go left or right until you find it.  No guesses how many times I guessed right the first time.

Most of the fields I went through today had sheep or horses in them but three had cows.  I do not like cows.  Must eat more steak.  The first field with cows I came to, one or two of them started to follow me as I walked across the field.  I turned, waved my arms and shouted at them, which is what I’ve been told is the right thing to do.  They would stop and stare and I would walk on for a bit.  When I turned around there was more of them and they were closer.   I did the stop, shout and wave thing and then walked on again.  Again, when I turned there was more of them and they were closer.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  It’s like that game you play as children when you are all trying to sneak up on the person at the end and you have to freeze when they turn around (statues?).  It is not fun playing this with cows.

The second field with cows had even more of them and I refused to walk through.  Instead, I went around through other fields.  I was clearly not supposed to do this as the gates were tied shut with string in clever knots that I couldn’t reproduce.  I kept expecting to encounter an irate farmer wanting to know what I was doing.

When I came to the third field there was not way around and I was tired and cross.  I just stomped through it shouting at them to get out of my way and they did!  Grumpy power!

As I approached my stop for the night I started coming across signs for the pub in the village, the Hunter's Moon Inn.  There was one at each gate or stile for the last few miles. They asked if you wanted a cold beer and told you how much further you had to go.  The very last sign, at the top of a particularly steep slope leading into the village, just had a picture of a pint of beer.  Very effective advertising as the first thing I did on reaching the village was stop at the pub for a pint.  I had the Butty Bach.

After my point I tottered off to my B&B for the night where I was given a gorgeous room with a view over that last nasty bit of path, with toiling hikers slowly making their way up.  In the end there was 7 of us staying at the B&B - all walking Offa’s Dyke path.

For dinner I tottered back to the pub.  There I had a pint of Doom Bar.  It’s Cornish beer rather than a local one but the other local one they had on tap was an IPA which I don’t like.  For food I started with a goat’s cheese tartlet which was just OK. The pastry case was bought pre-made and was too thick.  For main I had lamb chops (from local lambs) with mash, carrots and fried zucchini.  For dessert I had rhubarb and apple crumble with cream.  I then waddled back to my B&B.

Today was not a good day.  The cows were not pleasant and my feet were hurting badly.  My blisters were getting larger and larger and there was no way to stop them rubbing against the inside of my boots - which meant they were getting larger and larger.  I ignored what “they say” and popped them with a needle, squeezed out all the fluid, washed and bandaged them.  My feet are much happier now. My toes are just tender, not hurting.

I mentioned I had done this to my blisters to some other walkers at breakfast the next morning.  One of them, Lyn?, said she'd been told by a sergeant major in the Paras that what I did was the right thing to do.  It might horrify the medical types, but if you want to keep being able to walk you need to pop them.