Wednesday 18th May 1983
miles/7 hours 10 mins
Breakfasted at 8:30am sharp: good breakfast. Margaret and Derek "simply love it here" after Worcester. It is, they say, an exceedingly friendly place and they love the house - and it is their own! Slovenly directions sent me briefly astray but not for long. I saw two walkers ahead and used them as guides for some distance. Then alas, they stopped to eat a snack. They were a charming young German couple, beautiful looking. We passed and re-passed each other for a time and then I got ahead. The day brightened and it became absolutely lovely and this stretch of the dyke from Kington to Knighton must be some of the finest in Britain. The walking surface was short firm grass; the path that ran up and down the hills with magnificent views all around and the unusual quiet brought Houseman's words into my mind:
**Clungunford and Clun
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.
Well, this was not quite Clun, but the extraordinary quietness of this landscape was plain to be heard! The dyke, undulating over the land was, for long stretches in amazingly good shape still 20ft high after 1200 years. There was a plaque at one point on the B4355, giving the date of its beginning as AD 757 the first year of Offa's reign. He also murdered St Ethelbert and probably as a penance, founded St Albans Abbey. I dropped down to Knighton, with aching feet at 4:40pm, seven hours 10 minutes from Kington. It was early closing day, as it was when we came 20 years before but I found a little cafe open and bought three teas and a slice of Battenburg and a chocolate cake! I found an opened chemist shop that sold films, and bought one. Then had an expensive phone call to Marjorie. It was full of fun and worth every penny. But news of Edna was unsatisfactory. I walked to the youth hostel and enquired for a campsite. This was a farm by the river with a cold water tap and an Elsan for campers - good enough. At 7pm I was supine in my tent resting my feet. They were faintly swollen - a new experience, perhaps due to five days in wet boots. At 8pm heavy rain again but only for ½hour. I lay awake most of that night thinking about Edna and at last made up my mind to return and attend to her.
Note: Edna was his elderly sister who was unwell at the time.
** These are in fact NOT Housman's words but a version of a traditional rhyme quoted by Housman in one of his poems