Day 47 Blue Bell Inn to Welshpool

Today we started early. We had booked the taxi for 9.10 aiming to arrive at the defunct Blue Bell Inn at 9.30

You will see from the photo that it had been raining. All night. The walk today was much less hilly. It took us through grassy fields. Yes, wet grassy fields. Within minutes our trousers and feet were soaked. I’m never making the no-waterproof-trousers mistake again. Still, we soldiered on, with occasional stops to wring out our socks.

There aren’t many photos today, I think I was tired (aching limbs kept me awake for a couple of hours) and possibly still a bit dehydrated after yesterday. We admired a church steeple. Hang on, no church steeple mentioned in my book of maps, and that large pond seems a bit close. And where are the acorn signs marking the trail? Yes, we had gone the wrong way. Let’s just go back, I said. Helen, who you might remember has an aversion to re-tracing her steps was having none of it. We eventually worked out a compromise route and headed back to the Dyke. Again today we walked alongside or on top of the Dyke for large portions of the day.

The route today was fairly flat until towards the end when we reached some hills before descending into Welshpool. We were taking a slightly different route to the marked one as Welshpool isn’t quite on the route in the guidebook.

We climbed the hill, through woodlands-no woodland path photos though-and reached the Royal Forestry Society’s woodland. We followed the path downhill to the redwood grove, which of course we admired until we realised that once again the map and the terrain didn’t match. Despite having to retrace our steps -uphill of course- Helen didn’t complain.

We carried on through a grove of monkey puzzle trees (picture of bark) and onto our descent into Welshpool. We sat at the side of the road looking down onto Welshpool shining in the sunshine. There were some threatening dark grey clouds on the horizon as well.

I should have known better but I suggested taking a footpath. Dedicated blog readers will remember my footpath experiences. This one was not good. Helen, however was not retracing her steps. Hmm. There was another footpath which we took, and after some heroic negotiation of a decrepit nettle covered footbridge and a field workaround we emerged exactly where we had originally planned.

We staggered into Welshpool, briefly stopping to admire the River Severn, and realised that it had again been drenched with rain while we had been lucky with only a few spots.

And that was our day. I also had tea with Angela, a friend of Damian’s (Damian the other LEJOGER) who I had met at Llanthony, and chatted at dinner to the couple who had compared me to a mountain goat who are also staying at the Royal Oak. Sadly we didn’t see any of yesterday’s walkers, the two women (Ceri and her friend) or the couple.