Offa's Dyke Path

An easy and slightly odd finish. From Rhuallt the trail undulates north through farmland between about 100 and 200 m, on field-edge paths, quiet lanes and farmyards, past Marian Cwm where the boundaries carry a run of stone stiles found nowhere else on the route. Graig Fawr and the old lead-mining ground above Dyserth give the first proper sight of the sea, and from Gwaenysgor the path swings onto Prestatyn Hillside, a gorse and limestone slope where the whole coast, the offshore wind farms and, on a clear day, Snowdonia open out at once. Then the trail drops steeply off the hillside into a residential street and finishes with a flat kilometre and a half of pavement along Bastion Road to the beach. That last stretch is the least interesting walking on the trail, and it is better to know it is coming than to expect the sea at the bottom of the hill.

Navigation: Well waymarked and busy with local walkers. The only place worth attention is Prestatyn itself, where the trail leaves the hillside path for town streets and runs straight down Bastion Road to the seafront.

The biggest concentration of climbing on the trail and the section most walkers remember. It starts by climbing out of the Dee valley to the Panorama road under Trevor Rocks, with the ruin of Dinas Bran on its cone above Llangollen, and then commits to the Eglwyseg escarpment: several kilometres on a narrow shelf below limestone crags, the tread stony and canted outwards with scree falling away below it. Spectacular, and slow. At World's End the route turns up onto open moor, crossing wet ground on long runs of laid planks, drops through Llandegla Forest and reaches Llandegla, the only settlement in some 17 km. Then the Clwydian Range proper: Moel y Plas, Moel Llanfair, Moel Gyw, Foel Fenlli, Moel Famau with its Jubilee Tower, Moel Dywyll, Moel Llys-y-coed, Moel Arthur and Penycloddiau, most of them crowned with an Iron Age fort and every one of them demanding a full drop to a col and a full climb out. The paths are heather, grass and stone pitching, the ramparts are worth walking, and nothing is open between Llandegla and Bodfari.

Logistics: Between Llandegla and Bodfari the ridge carries no settlement at all, and the only ways off it are the road cols.

Navigation: Clear where it is dramatic and vaguer where it is not. The Eglwyseg shelf is a single obvious line and the problem there is footing rather than route-finding. The open ground between World's End and Llandegla Forest is where to be careful in cloud, since it is featureless and the planked sections come and go. On the Clwydian ridge the path is wide and marked with fingerposts and cairns, but published mapping does not always match the line on the ground here, so trust the waymarks over the map.

The hardest section on the trail and the one worth arriving fresh for. The Shropshire hills here run as a series of valleys set at right angles to the border, so for 20 km the path crosses them rather than following anything: out of Knighton straight up Panpunton Hill, then Cwm-Sanaham, Llanfair Hill, Hergan and Edenhope, each a full climb and a full descent with no traverse to soften it. It is also the finest stretch of the earthwork anywhere on the route, with the path along the crest of the bank for long distances and the pits the soil was dug from still visible on the English side. The steeper pitches are stepped with wooden slats set into the ground, which help going up and rather less coming down wet. Past the Kerry Ridgeway the ground gives up: the last 15 km are narrow lanes between large fields through Brompton, Forden and Kingswood, flat and quick, with Montgomery about a kilometre off the line. Almost nothing along the way is open, which is conspicuous even here.

Navigation: The easiest navigation on the trail, because for much of it you are walking on the dyke and the alternative is to fall off it. The care goes into the descents rather than the line: several drop through woodland on slat-stepped paths that are slick in the wet. In the flat lane section after Brompton the route follows a lot of minor roads and the turnings off them are the only thing to watch.

The hardest section on the trail and the one worth arriving fresh for. The Shropshire hills here run as a series of valleys set at right angles to the border, so for 20 km the path crosses them rather than following anything: out of Knighton straight up Panpunton Hill, then Cwm-Sanaham, Llanfair Hill, Hergan and Edenhope, each a full climb and a full descent with no traverse to soften it. It is also the finest stretch of the earthwork anywhere on the route, with the path along the crest of the bank for long distances and the pits the soil was dug from still visible on the English side. The steeper pitches are stepped with wooden slats set into the ground, which help going up and rather less coming down wet. Past the Kerry Ridgeway the ground gives up: the last 15 km are narrow lanes between large fields through Brompton, Forden and Kingswood, flat and quick, with Montgomery about a kilometre off the line. Almost nothing along the way is open, which is conspicuous even here.

Navigation: The easiest navigation on the trail, because for much of it you are walking on the dyke and the alternative is to fall off it. The care goes into the descents rather than the line: several drop through woodland on slat-stepped paths that are slick in the wet. In the flat lane section after Brompton the route follows a lot of minor roads and the turnings off them are the only thing to watch.

Border hill country at its most agreeable, and the section where the dyke comes back. The first half rolls over Disgwylfa Hill and through Gladestry to Hergest Ridge, a broad grass whaleback at about 425 m that walks more like a mown fairway than a mountain, open, fast underfoot and grazed by semi-wild ponies. Kington sits at its foot, and the trail then climbs almost without pause onto Bradnor Hill and its golf course before meeting the earthwork on Rushock Hill, the first time path and dyke have run together since the Wye valley. From there the bank is the route: on it or beside it over Herrock Hill, down to the Lugg at Dolley Green, then up again over Hawthorn and Cwm-Whitton hills. The second half is a run of five separate climbs rather than a ridge, and the last of them lets you down easily into Knighton in the Teme valley, at roughly the halfway mark.

Navigation: Straightforward. Once the dyke joins at Rushock Hill the earthwork is a handrail and there is very little to get wrong. Hergest Ridge is open access land with several paths crossing the summit plateau, so in cloud take a line off the top rather than assuming the widest track is the trail. The awkward pitch is out of Evenjobb, which climbs steeply between back gardens before opening onto the hill.

The high point of the trail in both senses. From the shoulder of Hatterrall Hill the path runs about 16 km along the crest of the Black Mountains, a broad whaleback rather than a knife edge, with England falling away east and the Vale of Ewyas west. Underfoot is better than the peat suggests: much of the eroded ground has been slabbed, and where it has not the tread is firm compacted sandstone and mudstone through moor that is wet either side of it. There is no shelter, nothing to buy and no water for the whole crossing, and the trig points are the only reliable position markers. The trail touches about 700 m near Twyn Llech and stays high for hours. It ends at Hay Bluff with a steep drop off the northern nose of the mountains into Hay on Wye, and then changes completely: a short stretch beside the Wye and the main road, then small fields, holloways and wooded dingles through the quiet border country that Francis Kilvert wrote about, ending at Newchurch.

Logistics: Once you are on the ridge the crossing cannot be shortened, only abandoned by descending 400 m into a valley on one side or the other and climbing back out or finding transport in a dead end.

Navigation: On the ridge the path is broad and unmistakable in clear air. In cloud it is a different problem, because the moor is featureless for miles and there is almost nothing to take a fix from. The junctions to get right are the western descents to Llanthony and Capel-y-ffin, which are the ones not to take by accident, and the northern end at Hay Bluff, where the trail turns off the ridge rather than carrying straight on. Below Hay the difficulty reverts to ordinary field and lane navigation.

Three different walks joined end to end. The first is the tail of the Wye valley woods: a drop to the river at Bigsweir, a climb back through Bigsweir Wood on unmade paths and wooden steps, then Highbury Wood and the crossing into Wales on the old railway bridge at Redbrook. Straight afterwards comes the sharpest short climb of the southern trail, roughly 230 m out of Redbrook to the Round House and Naval Temple on the Kymin, and a long descent into Monmouth. The remaining 26 km is Monmouthshire farmland: field edges, unsealed lanes, brooks, woodland shaws and a great many gates, with the Black Mountains growing steadily on the skyline. It is quiet, low and genuinely pleasant walking, and it is also where the route asks most of your attention, because the right of way across a grass meadow frequently has no trodden line on it. The section does not wind down at the end. It crosses the A465 at Pandy and goes straight up the flank of Hatterrall Hill, so the last few kilometres are the first climb of the Black Mountains.

Logistics: Monmouth at km 30 is the last town before the Black Mountains, and the climb onto the ridge begins within a kilometre of leaving Pandy rather than the following morning.

Navigation: Waymarking is good and the acorn appears on stiles, gates and posts, but between Monmouth and Pandy the route is field paths, and a right of way across a mown or grazed meadow often shows no line at all. Work waymark to waymark and look for the gate or stile in the far boundary rather than for a path. Where the signed line and the mapping disagree on this stretch, and they sometimes do, follow the signs.

The trail starts on the lip of Sedbury Cliffs above the Severn and spends its first kilometre walking the crest of the earthwork itself, one of the best-preserved lengths anywhere on the route. Then comes the part nobody photographs: residential streets through Sedbury and Tutshill, past a quarry, before the path finally turns into the Wye escarpment woods above Chepstow. From there it is around ten kilometres of continuous broadleaf woodland on a shelf high above the river, with limestone cliff tops at Wintour's Leap and a rock outcrop at the Devil's Pulpit looking straight down on Tintern Abbey across the water. Underfoot it is leaf litter, tree roots and bare limestone, comfortable dry and greasy wet. The climbing is constant but never long, and the trees hide the views until they choose to give one. The section ends by dropping to river level at Brockweir and starting the climb back up onto the wooded common of the Hudnalls.

Navigation: Acorn waymarks on stiles, gates and posts, and in the woods the escarpment edge does most of the work. The fiddliest navigation is the suburban start through Sedbury and Tutshill, where the route follows ordinary streets and estate roads rather than anything path-shaped.