Wye Valley Walk 2019 Day 4

Saturday the 27^th of July 2019

Today saw me walking a lot more than I needed to, because, you know, I’m a little crazy and need to prove that I can walk a full day without collapsing and being taken to hospital (again).

Most of the morning was flat riverside walking, some along very broad, and popular, tree-lined tracks.

Eventually, near Symonds Yat, there was an ascent up and over a hill, where I did lose the correct trail for a short while, but after coming down into the back of someone’s holiday cottage, I snuck through the garden and out their gate to rejoin the correct path.

A little after noon, and having crossed the river at Welsh Bicknor, I found myself only a few hundred metres from my destination for the day.  I had already considered various scenarios for how to walk both today and tomorrow and had previously decided on the relatively sensible idea to continue walking to Ross-on-Wye, then catch the bus back, but that made for a less-than-sensible option for tomorrow, but tomorrow wasn’t today.

So, I marched right on by the path to the youth hostel that I had booked for the night with nere a twitch to divert.  I stuck to my guns and walked the route.

Above Kerne Bridge, and striding right through someone’s property (which was the public right of way, so don’t go thinking I tromp through private property on a whim.  What, you still recall what I said two paragraphs back?), I mentioned to the lady on the property how it must be such an annoyance to have the public wandering right between their house and garden shed.  It was supposed to be an utterance that was intended as a partial apology as I sped by, but somehow began a lengthy conversation that ended up being about hernias and how her husband had just had his redone 30 years after first being diagnosed and operated on.  Slightly bewildered as to how that topic had come about, I marched on my merry, but confused, way.

It is rather interesting when planning these walks and looking at maps and getting some vague impression of what places will look like and the layout of such, then to arrive at the place you had imagined, only to find it not quite what you expected, despite Google street view.  Ross-on-Wye was one such place.  I found myself walking the streets for quite some time before eventually finding the local Wetherspoons.  What’s that I hear you say?  That I must be sick of Wetherspoons by now?  Well, it was only my fifth visit to one five days running, and they do have a different special each day of the week, so no, I wasn’t yet sick of them (although I must admit that I did get that way in the months to come).  Besides, the YHA website said there were no cooked meals at the Wye Valley YHA, so that was another reason to eat somewhere where a pint of cider was close by.

I grabbed the last bus to Goodrich, which had a castle, but for some reason I just wanted to get to the hostel and get what little clothes I had soiled washed, as I knew I was not going to see another laundry for 2 weeks.  I was also slightly distracted, as a gentleman on the bus (who had also been sitting in the Wetherspoons) struck up a conversation with me and I found he was also heading to the hostel.  I found him a little confusing to understand as he left gaps in his story that left me wondering and assuming.  One of the things I assumed was that he had not been to the hostel either yet, but later I discovered he had been staying there for a number of night already.  Needless to say, we disembarked the bus together and began walking toward the hostel, so leaving him to look for the castle would have been rude, wouldn’t it?  As it was, he was rather a plodder, and within minutes told me to walk ahead and he would see me later at the hostel.

At the hostel, I was a little disappointed and frustrated.  Apparently they did do cooked meals, which would have been nice to know beforehand, and might have changed my day's plans had I known.  Then I found they did not have a guest laundry, which the YHA website said they did, so some hand washing would be in order.  Finally, there was a brief panic when they did not know what I was talking about when I mentioned my larger pack should have been delivered earlier in the day (I had arranged a taxi service to carry it each day for me so I could just carry what I needed each day, and there are currently no luggage/baggage carrier companies operating along the Wye Valley Walk).

The frustrations did not end there, as I found I was in a 10-bed bunkroom, with all other beds occupied, and was kept awake initially by all 7 other sleepers (at the time) conducting a symphony of snores, and then later by 2 younger chaps who came to bed late and couldn’t stop laughing at the snorchestra.  So, with the combination of sounds I eventually got to sleep late and had little of it.

Day 5