Wye Valley Walk 2019 Day 1

Wednesday 24^th July 2019

This is the day, that instead of spending a evening relaxing in Monmouth and preparing for a longer walk the day after, I end up being the guest of one of Wales’ medical establishments instead.  Of course, I foreshadowed this doomed walk in the prelude post.  What do you mean, you haven’t read the prelude?  Go and do it now before you read further spoilers and have absolutely no idea of how things got to be as bad as they did.

I awoke in the B&B in Chepstow at around 6 a.m. but lay in bed for almost another 2 hours.  The forecast for the day was fine weather; too fine in fact as it was forecast to be the hottest day on record in London tomorrow.  I grabbed my day pack and left the B&B, walking to the local Tesco’s for some breakfast and lunch supplies.  I still find it irritating that places advertise with the phrase B&B, but don’t actually provide breakfast (which is one reason why I avoid booking through the AirBnB site, as nobody seems to there).  I found my way back to Chepstow Castle.  It was just after 8 and the castle gates did not open until 9:30. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good castle, especially a ruined, or partially ruined, one, but waiting around for well over an hour was not on the agenda for this morning, so I began the Wye Valley Walk.

Once I left the, admittedly brief, initial road walking, the trail entered the trees and climbed to a ridge that ran, I presume, high alongside the river Wye.  I say “presume” as I could not see the river at first.  When I did eventually get to view glimpses of the river, it resembled a muddy, brown, tidal snake.

The Giant's Cave is a cavern hewn out of solid rock.  The Walk goes right through it!

The Eagles Nest is a lookout that offered my first true views over the Wye River.

About midway through the day’s walk I descended into Tintern, where there are the ruins of Tintern Abbey.  For some reason the miser in me came out early during this 3-month holiday, and I felt like I needed to save my daily budgeted spending money for Ordinance Survey maps, rather than to spend it on entry fees for local historic sites (saving money ended up being slightly prophetic, as you will see in day 2’s post).  I did take photos of what parts of the abbey could be seen without entering the site proper.  I sat on a bench just off the main road to have a snack of a bag of crisps.

The trail then followed alongside the river for a section before heading back into the hills and trees.  Eventually I came across a picnic area (realising shortly after that I had made a wrong turn and would not have encountered this lunch locale had I stayed on route).  By this point I was sweating profusely; so much so that my socks were wet inside my boots.  Luckily, I had remembered to toss a spare pair of socks in my day pack that morning, and I proceeded to put the dry ones on.  My feet were beginning to show initial signs of blisters, so I used a bit of tape (a trick I’d recently learned from a YouTube video by one of my favourite U.K. vloggers, Abbie Barnes, whose link you can find in the menu) to prevent them from developing into the full-blown thing.

When researching this walk, I had read a blog by a guy who walked parts of it with his friend, and had admitted to becoming very lost around this point in the walk.  It made the walk seem as though it was extremely difficult to navigate.  I had subscribed to an app, View Ranger, prior to starting the holiday, and found it not only great to navigate major LDWs that show on OS maps, but also to create routes for each day along footpaths that make up lesser known LDWs.  So, having a trail guide book, the OS map, and the app, made navigating this a breeze.

Coming back down to the river, crossing it, and walking alongside it, I began to feel rather weak, but at this point I put it down to a lack of conditioning, as all my training for this holiday had been on the relatively flat Toronto streets and in parks.  However, I did feel bad enough to stop worrying about taking photos, so I put the camera into my rucksack.  As I continued, I found I would have to stop regularly to catch my breath and gain some energy.  Luckily, I was near my destination for the day; Monmouth

Upon arriving at Monmouth, and as I needed an O.S. map for the next two days – I had planned on diverting from the Wye Valley Walk to walk Wales’ Three Castles Walk, I located a bookshop.  As I was trying to explain to the retail person what I needed, I found I could hardly speak, having to put my hands on my knees and take deep breaths.  From the bookshop, it was a short walk to another Wetherspoons, where I found the free water dispenser and downed around 5 small glasses of water one after the other.  Here is where you are probably asking yourself if I had been drinking water during the walk.  The answer to that is “yes”.  In fact, I later checked my water bladder to see I had drunk about 2 litres during the day prior to arriving at the pub.

I ordered a chicken burger with chips and salad and a pint of cider, then found a table to sit at.  My right calf muscle started some serious cramping, and I had to apply some ibuprofen gel to try and alleviate the pain.  It subsided, and the food arrived, and I began to eat.  I’d only eaten the salad, and drunk about a third of my pint, when I suddenly lost my appetite and felt very light-headed.  Using Dr. Google, I rationalised that I was suffering from heat stroke (I was later proven wrong).  I was worried I would faint, so I made my way (with difficulty) to the bar to tell them what I was experiencing in case I blacked out.

I ended up laying on the floor in currently unoccupied area of the pub, suffering from a severe cramp returning to my calf muscle and my arms tingling.  After applying more ibuprofen gel, getting an ice pack under the back of my neck (I’m still laying down) and raising my right leg up on a stool, the local paramedic was called.  He arrived within about 10 to 15 minutes, took blood pressure (slightly low), tested blood sugar, checked heart rate, and announced that those readings were normal.  He did advise my going to the hospital, which was in Abergavenny.  Who am I to refuse a medical professional’s advise, so I took him up on his offer to drive me there – getting back was going to be another story.

We arrive at the hospital around 7 in the evening and over about 6 hours I am asked questions, had tests done, and was put on a saline drip (getting 2 bags of it during the night).  During this time, I also call the B&B I was booked into for the night to update them on my whereabouts and situation.  Finally, the doctor told me they believe it was dehydration, and said they wanted to observe me overnight, being concerned about potential kidney damage.  However, they had no spare beds, so I lay on the stretcher in the hallway, with bright lights blazing overhead.  Placing my hat over my face, somehow, I eventually drift off and manage a few hours sleep.

Day 2