Stunning Offa
It’s mid August in 2020. Wales has finally opened its borders and English based Terroir has travelled north west, desperate to get back onto Offa’s Dyke. The support vehicle has delivered three of us to the exact point on the Shropshire Union Canal tow path where we ended our walk eight months previously, on a carefree, Covid free, wet and windy January day. Ahead of us lies some 15 miles of the most spectacular walking on the Offa’s Dyke Trail. The weather is hot and our packs are heavy with water and sun block, in addition to the usual supplies. The frisson of expectation is tinged with apprehension. I also have a nasty feeling this blog may get written in the dramatic present tense.
A short walk along the ‘Shroppie’ brings us to the southern end of a UNESCO World Heritage Site: the Pont Cysyllte Aqueduct. This puts this section of the Offa’s Dyke Trail in the company of the City of Bath, Blenheim Palace, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Iron Bridge Gorge and, of course the ‘Frontiers of the Roman Empire’ along Hadrian’s Wall. Top marks to the National Trails for getting at least two UNESCO badges.
The UNESCO website entry is obviously written by a civil engineer and refers to the aqueduct as ‘Covering a difficult geographical setting’. I would accept ‘challenging’ and, indeed, embrace ‘spectacular’ but to me, ‘difficult setting’ reduces Telford’s ‘masterpiece of engineering and monumental metal architecture’ to the level of a fractious child (https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1303/).
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontcysyllte_Aqueduct) adopts a far more practical approach by explaining the economic context which prompted the building of the aqueduct, and yet left the canal unfinished. What is now known as the Llangollen Canal was supposed to be an essential section in the proposed Ellesmere canal network, connecting the River Severn with Liverpool docks. A geographically less ‘difficult’ and cheaper route was abandoned in favour of the Vale of Llangollen crossing, a circuit which would allow commercial access to the coal fields of north east Wales. Unfortunately, the predicted revenues did not materialise and the completion of the stunning aqueduct, in 1805, is reported to be about the last major piece of construction in this unfinished engineering matrix.
Due to its links to the Shropshire Union Canal, the Llangollen arm continued to carry limited commercial traffic into the 1930s but was formally abandoned in the 1940s. The aqueduct was retained as part of a water feed to the Shroppie, and reopened to a new world of pleasure craft some 40 years later.
The aqueduct is basically a very long metal trough, supported on iron arches and hollow stone pillars. As a pig trough, it could probably feed and water nearly 1,000 pigs simultaneously, or could be converted to about 170 bath tubs laid end to end. The tow path runs the length of the trough and a substantial metal railing protects path users from tumbling the 125 ft (30 m) to the valley below. It is not an experience for the feint hearted, whether on foot or aboard a narrow boat.
Because of this challenging setting, the official Offa’s Dyke Trail offers two options for crossing the River Dee at this point. Two of us go by aqueduct tow path and the third takes the valley route. Apparently, alternative photographs from the valley bottom are crucial!
From Trevor Basin at the north end of the Aqueduct, the Trail crosses the wooded and pastoral Dee valley before starting a steady climb up and out of the Vale of Llangollen. Our way is about to explode into one of Britain’s the most dramatic and surprising landscapes. We are about to enter the Carboniferous limestone world of the Eglwyseg and Esclusham Mountains.
The hyperbole is not just mine. Described as ‘an iconic landscape of truly outstanding scenic and visual quality’ (https://www.clwydianrangeanddeevalleyaonb.org.uk/projects/the-dee-valley/) this area is designated an Area of Outstanding Beauty. What is so special about this extraordinary area? Let us take you on a photographic tour and give you a taste of this bizarre landscape.
Leaving the road above Trevor village, the Offa’s Dyke Trail heads off through the gateway to Trevor Hall and Trevor Hall Wood. The battered formality of this entrance comes as something of a suprise, but in hind sight, it presents a wonderful, Narnia-esque, entrance to the remarkable landscape which awaits.
Below:
left - climbing upwards through Trevor Hall Wood
right - emerging at the top.
We climb through the wood, a significant portion of which has been converted to exotic conifer plantation, and emerge to admire the view before joining a track and then a metalled road. This latter would normally spell disappointment, but not today. What a privilege to have access to this unexpected landscape (aptly named, at this point, The Panorama): part desert, part scree, part cliff, part guardian of the wooded river valleys below (the Dee and the Eglwyseg), part pasture, part scrub, part alien.
There is, however, a great deal more to this landscape than scenic wonder. Other designations also apply: a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). Specialist wildlife love a stressed landscape such as this free draining, lightly grazed, alkaline, and to humans, perhaps, unfriendly environment. Here we have the calcerous dry grasslands, the limestones screes and rocky slopes. Here are rock roses, musk thistles, and autumn gentian. Here grows the rare Whitebeam - Sorbus anglica - and here the rare Welsh hawkweed (Heiracium cambricum) has been recorded. Later, we will find contrasting and extensive areas of dry heath.
Another designation also gives the lie to the phrase ‘unfriendly environment’. This is a Landscape of Special Historic Interest and humans have made use of this area from at least the Bronze Age. The Dee valley was fertile and well-watered of course, but the uplands may well have offered summer grazing, ceremonial sites and, by the iron age, defended settlements (https://www.cpat.org.uk/projects/longer/histland/llangoll/vlland.htm) ‘Hard’ evidence of Medieval society - including wealth, christianisation and politics - is much easier to find and a couple of atmospheric ruins deepen the landscape’s sense of mystery. Madog ap Gruffydd Maelor, 13th century Prince of Powys, built Valle Crucis Abbey, a Cistercian foundation, later dissolved by Henry VIII in 1537. It’s less than a mile off piste, hidden from view, but well worth a visit.
In contrast, Castell Dinas Brân (left) is a highly visible symbol of Welsh history and partiotism, probably built by Gruffydd Maelor II (Madog’s eldest son) on a previously occupied (probably from the Iron Age onwards), and very prominent, hill top above the town of Llangollen.
Today, this landscape is beloved by hikers, cyclists, climbers, naturalists, archaeologists, historians, landscape lovers and sheep, yet on this hot August weekday it feels deserted and other worldly.
We are not entirely alone, however (below): cycling and farming provides the most obvious signs of life on the day of our visit.
Walking through this landscape is suprisingly tough, however. It’s hot, the scenery is mind blowing, there is precious little shade, the walking is either hard-on-the-spine highway or narrow-stony-track and the few streams we cross - plunging down and up again to cross their narrow valleys - are nearly dry. It is also a long, long section.
At the appropriately named Worlds End, we drop around 50 m (160 ft) to cross a steep sided valley and then start a 65 m (210 ft) climb between the Eglwyseg and Esclusham Mountains to reach our top height for the day (394 m or around 1,290 ft). The map shows remnants of the long established mining activity all around us although they are hard to pick out, even on these bare hill sides.
The Trail is rocky and bare, but life is all around. Above us, a single tree, beside us a lime loving musk thistle or a rare grayling butterfly, below cyclists, and the verdant vegetation and farmsteads of the valley bottoms.
We have walked through this startling landscape for four hours - tired but never tiring of the view - when, with an extraordinary jolt, the Trail suddenly segues into another exceptional, but totally different topography and habitat: the dry heath which we spoke of earlier.
To be honest, by this time, we are suffering from mental overload and physical exhaustion. Our water supplies are running low and we take a break beneath scant shade before we attempt to cross the sea of heath and bracken. An even more senstive environment than the stony mountain sides which we have just left, the Trail is now protected by a makeshift board walk, or paved with enormous recycled slabs which remind me, rather ominously, of grave stones. Sheep are safely grazing, but some areas appear to be managed as grouse moor, so the grouse may also view the slabs as a bad omen. The heather - at the peak of its floristic beauty - is very easy on the eye, but the slabs and boards are even tougher to hike over than the limestone tracks. It looks marvellous, but we are plodding on, silently wondering when it will all end.
But the heath does end, as abruptly as it started and, with a sigh of relief, we step into the shade of Llandegla Forest. The respite is short lived, however. This is a commercial forest with row on row of identical, exotic conifers and very limited ground flora. The track is, in parts, an ankle breaker, the mountain bikers are manic fellow travellers and the clear fell operations make paving slabs and heather look like a stroll in the park.
But Llandegla Forest means we are very close to Llandegla village where the support vehicle will be waiting for us. In normal circumtances this soft path, through mixed woodlands and fields, would be a delightful way to end a day’s walking. For the first time in my life, however, I am really struggling to put one foot in front of another. The final stile is a slow nightmare. There are steps up to the road which seem impossibly steep. I am nearly defeated by having to move my body into the back of the car. But I do it. Without help. And an hour and two pints of water later, I can move again - almost normally.