Offa's Dyke

3rd-17th July 2006

King Offa was king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia from AD757-796. He was probably responsible for the building of Offa’s Dyke (Clawdd Offa) but no-one is entirely sure. There is similar uncertainty about the purpose of the Dyke, which actually comprises a bank of earth and a ditch. The bank is always on the Mercian (eastern) side of the ditch, and when the earthwork meets hills it always runs to the west of them, thus providing a view from England into Wales. So it may have been built to keep an eye on the Welsh – and to keep them out! However the absence of any fortifications associated with the Dyke leads to the interpretation that it was intended more as a symbolic statement of Mercian power.

Offa’s Dyke runs from Sedbury Cliffs, above the River Severn near Chepstow, to Treuddyn near Wrexham. In places it is 2.5 metres high and 20 metres wide, but elsewhere there is no sign of the earthwork at all. The ‘gaps’ lead to yet another point of contention – perhaps the Dyke didn’t exist in these places (perhaps the border ran along rivers or mountain ranges) or perhaps there was a temporary structure of which no trace remains.

The Offa’s Dyke Path is a 177-mile long National trail, which follows Offa’s Dyke for around 70 miles of its journey from Sedbury Cliffs to Prestatyn. The Path was officially opened on 10th July 1971, and we visited the Offa’s Dyke Centre at Kington 35 years to the day after that occasion.

So what are the attractions of the Offa’s Dyke Path? Why did Richard, Helen and I decide to walk it as our first serious long-distance path? I think there were probably three attractions for us:

1. It’s a coast to coast running from the south to the north coast of Wales (or vice versa). We had been thinking of walking Wainwright’s Coast to Coast and there is something very special about starting at the sea at one side of a country and walking across that country to the sea at the other side;

2. It runs through beautiful and unspoilt countryside that we didn’t know very well prior to the walk;

3. The walking is incredibly varied.

The highest point of the path is at 700 metres on Hatterall Ridge and for most of the time you're climbing hills not mountains, but don't be fooled - parts of the path cut across the natural 'grain' of the land, so you descend one hill only to find another one to climb. Pity those 8th Century workers building Offa's Dyke! In other places the path is at low level, on the flood plain of the Wye or the Severn, or at higher level but following a ridge. The signposting along the path is generally excellent, with lots of different styles of signs as you pass through the counties of Gloucestershire, Gwent, Herefordshire, Powys, Shropshire and Clwyd. However, although the path is a bit of a 'motorway' in places, for much of the time it is narrow and relatively unworn.

The Offa's Dyke Path starts in England and finishes in Wales and if you include places like Hay-on-Wye where we had to cross the border in going from where we were staying to the town centre, I reckon we crossed the border from England to Wales 13 times and from Wales to England 12 times. In addition there were five stretches where we were walking along the border and so presumably wandered from country to country without realising that we were doing so.

Some more statistics: we reckon we walked a total of almost exactly 200 miles in the holiday that took us the 177 miles along the Offa's Dyke Path (there are not many B&Bs, restaurants or shops actually on the route of the path!) and we counted 558 stiles (yes, we did count them...), 40 kissing gates and 101 ordinary gates (so the 'official' estimate of 700 stiles seems reasonable - some stiles had been recently replaced by kissing gates).

We walked through a small amount of drizzly rain and it was cold on our second day in the Black Mountains. However our over-riding memory of the weather is of the phenomenal heat at the beginning and end of the holiday. This made the walking more challenging, but provided some lasting memories of the forest fire, lips so sunburnt that I had to drink tea through a straw (carried in pride of place in my rucksack) and welcome drinks of lemonade, J2O and cider at pubs along the way. And the achievement of getting to the end is made sweeter in the knowledge that other people who attempted walking holidays during the same heatwave (probably very sensibly) gave up.

First leg of Offa's Dyke path

For more photographs of our walk along Offa's Dyke, click here.