Those eagle-eyed readers will know that we should have been walking in the Brecon Beacons today, culminating in an ascent of Pen y Fan. So why am I going to write about the Worcestershire Way? The forecast was not good. The Brecon Beacons was to be blessed with regular heavy snow showers with strong, gale force winds gusting up to 70 – 80 mph. Not a pleasant place to be when you are blind or visually impaired so we decided upon the safer option of walking part of the less exposed Worcestershire Way. What a bright, sunny morning it was in Worcestershire, although it was windy and had been even windier in the night.
Only ten students were able to take part, many of the King’s contingent being otherwise occupied. As they piled into the bus, I followed in my car as I was heading off at the end to Wales for the Crickhowell Walking Festival. The minibus dropped the students and the staff, who were not driving, at the foot of a steep climb up from the lane, about half way between Martley and Abberley. It was a bit cruel to drop them there, for no sooner had they climbed they would drop again steeply before climbing steeply again.
Lily
Meanwhile Phil and I drove to Ribbesford Church with the intention of walking to meet the group. We also had Phil’s delightful dog, Lily, with us, a working spaniel so alert, enthusiastic, loyal and obedient. I am often content to walk in silence, even in the company of others, but this morning Phil and I talked constantly for the whole five miles until we met the group. Phil has recently become a ‘daddy’ and this was the first time we had been together since that happy occasion. I say ‘happy’ but judging from the graphic detail in Phil’s description of the event, it must have been very harrowing as he and Amy went through a difficult birth. Nevertheless, the outcome, Harry, has made them both immensely happy even if his introduction to the world was a bit traumatic.
On the approach to Joan’s Hole, a lovely, tree filled valley with a wooden house by the brook, I began to think it must be time we were meeting the group coming towards us. This thought came to the fore of our mind as we were presented with a gate opening on to a field of horses who had absolutely churned up the grass on the other side of the gate, turning the area into a quagmire of very wet mud. “Let’s wait here,” I thought. They can’t be far away. We went through, across the field and into the area known as Joan’s Hole. What happened next? We met the group! We could have stayed behind the gate and the mud, waited five minutes and they would have met us. All that mud, for nothing!
The walk back with the group was very pleasant with more varied conversation. We soon stopped for lunch at the edge of a field, sheltered from the wind and in the sunshine. It was here that we met the only other walkers of the day, a group heading south who complained that we had pinched their lunch spot. Tough! There was plenty of room for them but they chose to continue.
As the end of the walk drew near the cloud built up and we had the beginnings of a front passing over us. Fortunately, we made it back to the vehicles before the heavens opened. It was not Pen y Fan but it was a worthy alternative. When I, later in the afternoon, arrived in Crickhowell for the walking festival, there had been a group on the Brecon Beacons and the conditions were awful with some members abandoning their walk and one man, who was taken ill, had to be airlifted to hospital. Whilst I was initially disappointed we were not going to the Brecon Beacons with the group, it proved to be the right decision.
