Time to walk: LEJOG Day 30: Longtown to Hay-on-Wye

Weather: Cloudy with showers and sunny patches

Distance covered today: 20.6km (12.7mi)

Last night's B&B: The Crown Inn (£30)

Cumulative distance: 566.0km (351.7mi)/ % Complete: 32.2%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 30 (click!)

A prodigious effort was required for today’s route. I think John and I were both slightly apprehensive about it. He knew better than I that the way to Hay lay across a rather intimidating mountain, the Hay Bluff, which would require us to climb about 700m to the watershed, before descending into Hay on a 20km walk. I was though, most grateful for his presence, because his local knowledge enabled him to devise a route that used a succession of the most attractive paths and led us gradually and steadily to the top of the pass.

Last evening while I was tapping away on my netbook, John took himself off for a nostalgic trip around the haunts of his old home town. He met people who well remembered his parents and he spent some time catching up with them and learning how much the community had developed. He arrived back and shepherded me off to the pub in an elated frame of mind and we spent a delightful hour or so with John filling me in on what life had been like as a youngster in this lovely place. I had been frog-marched off to the neighbouring village along a pleasant path through the fields and trees and along two streams to the church where his Dad had played the organ, and then I was allowed a beer in the pub next to the church in a garden complete with wooden giraffes, crocodiles, lions and owls. As the publican’s wife put it with a rather resigned air, “most people get flowers for their birthday, I get wooden animals”. We ambled back to our B&B through the late evening sunshine, once again preferring the footpaths and fields, feeling exceptionally mellow.

I had hoped that last night we would have had a stimulating conversation to accompany our evening meal. John seems to remember that we did, but despite considerable effort this morning, we were unable to pin down exactly what it was we were talking about. I do remember him ordering that bottle of excellent Chilean red, but after that things become a bit hazy. I think we rehashed the bin Laden assassination, John taking again a more pragmatic view than my own, and I’m convinced that there followed a revelatory conversation about something else, but it is forever lost! At least I got a very good night’s sleep to prepare me for today’s assault on Hay Bluff.

There was something about today’s route that reminded me of my training walk from the Kogelberg to Betty’s Bay. The walks contrast scenically in almost every conceivable way; the countryside could hardly be more different. There was though the same steady progress up the river valley to the top of the pass, the same sense of wilderness at the watershed, and the same rather unexpectedly sudden descent on the other side. The countryside here was much gentler, the greens much greener, and there was much more grey. The gentle River Wye contrasts strongly with the violent blue of the South Atlantic and the moors are much less harsh than those foreboding peaks in the Kogelberg. Here we had to climb double the height. Yet there was the same sense of remoteness, the same incredible natural beauty and the same sense of transitioning from one very distinct place to another. The views from the top of both places are too spectacularly panoramic to be captured in photographs. They have to be seen to be truly appreciated.

So, after three extremely good says, John will take his leave tomorrow morning and find his way back to Crete and Yasmin. We have both thoroughly appreciated this time together, reconnecting in a new environment, sharing some pretty intimate stuff and learning a lot from and about each other. Today’s walk was also quite testing and yet I think both of us appreciated it and each other more than we had anticipated. One has these sorts of experience when one is young, and it is good to know that they are still available, even now. It does take effort and the right circumstances.

There is, though a continuing bone of contention. As the man with the local knowledge and the man with the 1:50,000 OS map of the area, he was in an unfairly advantageous position with respect to finding the correct route. Using these advantages to the full, he was completely ruthless in exploiting my lack of a competitive advantage and there was no let-up in his use of uncompromising negotiating skill to enforce his advantage. Even though I made a comeback late in the day when we were descending the mountain and we were again on the Offa’s Dyke trail, and therefore on my strip map, I regret to have to admit that the direction-finding score at the completion of the leg was a resounding victory to John at 6-2.

And he was still a bit grumpy about it!! Time for him to go home!!!