Coast-to-coast through breathtaking border country:
Enjoy breathtaking borderlands – and ponder historical mysteries – on an ancient coast-to-coast celebrating a very special birthday this year.
IMAGINE ENGLAND IN 785 AD. Instead of one country it was a welter of warring kingdoms: Wessex, Essex, Kent, Sussex,
East Anglia, Northumbria and in the middle of it all Mercia.
Ruled by a king called Offa, Mercia stretched from the Trent to the Thames, the Fens to the Welsh border and it was here that Offa decided to build a vast linear earthwork, a ‘great dyke… from sea to sea’ to keep the Welsh at bay. Little did he know that 1186 years later it would provide the inspiration for a national trail. Or that in 2021 that walk would celebrate its 50th year as one of Britain’s finest long-distance routes.
But here I am on the Offa’s Dyke Path, or Llwybr Clawdd Offa if you’re on the Welsh side of the border, a line National Trail Officer Rob Dingle explains you’ll cross 26 times if you walk all 177 miles of the trail. It’s a few days before the path’s official birthday on 10th July and I’ve met Rob at Penycloddiau, a hill in the Clwydian Range of North Wales, to walk a seven-mile taster. Rob has been trail officer for 14 years and spends much of his time out on the path: surveying its condition, checking waymarking, occasionally passing on his own map to trekkers who’ve lost theirs. There’s time in the office too, in discussion with the eight county councils (three English, five Welsh) the trail goes through, fielding queries from walkers about distance, terrain, facilities – and whether he could predict the weather for a hike next June. Rob’s love for this path is immediately clear as he waves an enthusiastic arm at the growing view across the lush Vale of Clwyd to the angles of Snowdonia shadowing the horizon. “We bill the trail as breathtaking borderlands,” he says. “But I also like to describe it as a walk through history.” He doesn’t just mean the dyke. Penycloddiau is capped by one of the biggest hill forts in Wales, where recent archaeological digs unearthed tools dating back to the Bronze Age. A flagged path steps us up through rampart after rampart to a cairn at the top, with a long panorama south along the Clwydian ridge. ▶
Bell heather is already tinting slopes pink; by the time you read this the ling will have turned them deep purple. The path repeatedly dips and reappears as it surfs past the Iron Age hillfort on Moel Arthur and on to the 19th-century Jubilee Tower on Moel Famau: 8000 years of history in seven miles.
The path’s scenery is as varied as its heritage. Walking from Sedbury Cliffs near Chepstow in the south – as most people do – you’ll come through the steep forested gorge of the Wye Valley, past ancient castles, up onto the high ridgelines of the Brecon Beacons, weave through farmland to the wild Shropshire Hills, on past the banded crags of Eglwyseg to this heathery range, where the view spans beyond trail end at Prestatyn and out to sea.
“I’ve walked the trail 10 times,” says Rob, “but I always see something new.” He explains he’s never trekked it all in one go — an achievement that gets you into the hall of fame – but in sections for work. He estimates that in a normal year 3000 walkers hike end-to-end, typically taking 12-14 days and collecting stamps in a trail passport along the way. But splitting it is a great way to tackle it: “Lots of walkers do it in two halves. They do a week to Knighton – its Welsh name, Tref-y-clawdd, means town on the dyke – and then they come back another year to continue onto Prestatyn.”
And the trail’s ancient landscapes are still changing. As we drop down from Penycloddiau we stop to admire the view. “This used to be forest when I first walked it,” says Rob, “so you couldn’t see anything. But then it was clear felled and now it’s regenerating with these young birches.” Later, as we climb Moel Arthur he explains that the chequerboard pattern you’ll see on some of the slopes is where heather has been burned to create a mosaic of young and mature plants to suit black grouse. Populations of these striking birds, with their white under-tails and red eye-wattles, have dropped dramatically, making conservation work like this crucial. If you’re very lucky – like Rob – you might see 15 in a single, memorable morning.
The trail drops again beyond Moel Arthur and Rob points to the slope ahead with a grin: “That’s our path.” It tackles the steep contours of Moel Llys-y-coed head on and from here looks near vertical. In reality it’s a puff, but no worse. The Offa’s Dyke Path may tot up a bigger-than-Everest ascent of 29,806 feet if you walk it all, but it’s never unnervingly, hands-on steep. The highest point is on the Hatterrall Ridge in the Brecon Beacons at 2308 feet, but Rob says the toughest section is the Shropshire Switchbacks. “You’re cutting across the lines of the ridges there, rather than going along
them, so as soon as you reach the top it’s down the other side and up the next one.”
That section is also where the ditch and rampart of Offa’s Dyke is at its most visible, in places stretching close to 90 feet wide and 26 feet from ditch-bottom to bank-top. The ditch is always on the west, Welsh side – that’s how we know who was trying to keep who out – and appears to have been routed to always give good views into Wales, so the Mercians could keep an eye on their foe’s movements. “In some places the path walks along the top of the dyke itself,” says Rob. “We’ve moved some sections off, but we’d like to move more to prevent damage to what is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.”
There are good sections of dyke visible in the south too, around the Devil’s Pulpit above Tintern Abbey, but on parts of the trail – like here – there is no evidence of the earthwork. “Part of the route for the national trail was drawn to take in the very best scenery instead,” says Rob. “Further south the dyke actually runs through Herefordshire, to the east of the path.” He points east from where we’re walking on Moel Dywyll and adds, “Recent work has revealed more of the dyke up here too, firming up the idea that the defence ran coast to coast. It was never continuous though.”
There are various theories about those gaps. It could be the Mercians simply made use of higher ground, or parts were patrolled by soldiers instead, or that Offa got along with some of the Welsh tribes: “It’s said the English cut the ears off every Welshman found east of the dyke, and the Welsh hanged every Englishman west of it,” says Rob. ▶