The Great Escape – Walking the Welsh borderlands
In the film of Bruce Chatwin’s novel On the Black Hill, the opening sequence sees a hang-glider floating over the Welsh and English borderlands shifting from the outer edges of the Brecon Beacons Mountains down to the Wye Valley near Hay.
The viewer’s eye moves in the breeze attached, as it were, to the hang-glider, skirting close to the ground as it moves upwards over the mountainsides and down into the valleys. Starkly barren moors give way to deeply green hillsides with medieval churches nestling among groups of trees. A cloudy wetness floats above and moistens the ground below. When the sun breaks through it lends a silky pixilated sheen to the landscape.
The Welsh Borders are shaped by ancient intimidating geologies. The mountains reign supremely and the valleys pay them homage. It is a magnificent landscape with some of the best walking in Britain. Nearby moreover across the hills into England, there is a lushness in the wide expanse of the Wye valley.
And ranged along the Marches that divide the two are the remains of castles marking the contested interface between medieval Wales and England. But there is softness too and warmth and culture and great food and drink. Three or four days in these Borderlands is a real escape for any urbanite pining for freshness; but dress sturdily for winds rise readily and rain falls easily and plentifully.
History stalks the Borders landscape, sometimes bleakly but often with a gentle touch. The short-stay visitor is tempted to look through car windows and drive on greedily seeking “views” and vistas and the leftovers of history. Tempting but a mistake. The car needs to be parked from time to time and a hill climbed or a track or pathway walked even at the price of a misty dampness on the face.
The Welsh Borders need to be felt and the scents of the Wye Valley inhaled. There is much to do and much to be seen but above all the visitor has to experience the area and that truly starts only as walking shoes touch the rocky greenness on the ground.
What to Do
Begin with a walk and a challenge. The road south from the town of Brecon rises steadily as you head towards Storey Arms in sight of the highest peaks in the Brecon Beacons at Corn Du (2863ft) and Pen y Fan (2907ft). They are your objectives and Pen y Fan should take the average walker two hours up and back down. It’s a popular route, so arrive early. You will find a few exceptionally fit runners heading past you, some possibly from the Regimental HQ of the Royal Welsh in Brecon. Do not despair and walk on upwards steadily.
For a very different but in some ways more inspiring exploration, head further east to the outer reaches of the Black Mountains around the tiny hamlet of Llanthony. Before doing so or whilst on your way, stop and read the wonderfully evocative account of Gerald of Wales’ journey through this area in the 12th century (available in a Penguin Classics paperback).
Of mainly Norman origin but a quarter Welsh, Gerald was a churchman with a mission to become Archbishop of Wales, an ambition which despite all his connections with Kings and other notables he never attained. But he was a traveller who looked and inquired and reported. He wrote of the vale in which Llanthony is situated that it “is shut in on all sides by a circle of lofty mountains … [and] … there stands the abbey church of Saint John the Baptist … constructed on the very spot where once there stood the humble chapel of St David …”
And there its substantial remains still stand, beautiful as architecture and uplifting as a location. Getting to the abbey ruins takes determination but it is as worth the journey today as it was a thousand years ago.
In my case come across by accident, the house where the great Australian painter, Sidney Nolan, lived his last ten years is also off the beaten track. Hard by the Wales/England border near Presteigne but just inside Herefordshire, “The Rodd”, is a late medieval manor house surrounded by 250 acres of land with a barn converted for use as an exhibition space. A number of Nolan’s own paintings are shown in the house itself. It seems fitting that an artist best known for his spare Australian landscapes and abstract portraits should have spent his final years adjacent to the spare beauties of the Borders and Black Mountains. Opening hours are limited but it is an enticing stopping place.
By way of contrast and not far from Presteigne and still in the Welsh Marches are the Hergest Croft Gardens laid out by the Banks family early in the 20th century and developed over the succeeding 120 years. The setting is superb on a sloping hillside facing the Black Mountains. Within its 70 acres are to be found an incredible range of trees, the Redwoods and Monkey Puzzles well-established and towering upwards. During our visit, the innumerable numbers of Azaleas were still in multi-coloured bloom and the rhododendrons were opening up. The house is set back with a veranda typical of a certain type of Edwardian house. Indeed if Sidney Nolan ever called by he must surely have been reminded of the verandaed houses plentiful in parts of Sydney and Adelaide.
Where to Eat and Drink
Pubs abound providing a community focus in somewhat isolated villages. Indeed chapel and pub often sit like antiphonal resonances or claims to attention in Welsh communities of a certain age. Whilst some chapels offer a melancholy prospect as abandoned or new-formed homes, the pubs are holding up well though quite a few of them have also fallen on hard times or even closed. For the more fastidious or adventurous eater, there are many quality outlets, especially on either side of Offa’s Dyke separating England and Wales.
Hay-on-Wye is renowned for its books but book readers are also usually discriminating – or at least enthusiastic – eaters and drinkers and the Blue Boar Pub and the Hay Tap are British food outlets among the Italian and other offerings. On the Welsh side of the border and a bit further south in Abergavenny, is a prized local restaurant which is a favourite of mine, The Walnut Tree. Under the stewardship of chef Shaun Hill, the restaurant has had a Michelin star since 2010. In my view, if your budget is limited – and whose isn’t nowadays – the trick is to go for lunch; the menu is not extensive but of very high quality and eaten in a charmingly unfussy dining room.
Where to Stay
And talking still of eating whilst thinking of sleeping, there is a little jewel to be found between Brecon and Hay-on-Wye in the village of Felin Fach called The Felin Fach Griffin. Here the Inkin brothers (owners also of The Gurnards Head on the north coast of Cornwall near St Ives and of The Old Coastguard at Mousehole near Newlyn) have produced in the “Griffin” a wonderful meld of excellence and informality. After a long day of walking and exploring among the mountains and valleys, you can retire for a hot bath in a warmly furnished room before heading down for a superbly executed dinner and a choice of carefully curated wines.
The Inkins draw on their Cornish inns to provide high-quality fish and on the local area to source fine lamb. The chefs are skilled users of the good produce and the dishes are sophisticated in execution. And following a short after-dinner stroll, a comfortable bed beckons with the prospect of a good breakfast the next morning.