Offas Dyke Day 4 Longtown to Hay-on-Wye

Offas Dyke Day 4 pictures
Fitful night as the Friday night crowd at The Crown were a little rowdy until after 12 midnight, especially in the car park, under our window.
When good sleep arrived it was time to get up, and again we were greeted with low cloud and grey skies.
Today we had to climb back onto the Hatterwel Hill ridge, the ridge that dominated Longtown, and off which we walked last night.

Red Daren and the path up (it gets steeper)

So it was about a 300 metre climb back onto Offas Dyke, around a feature known as Red Daren, on a poorly formed track overgrown with bracken, thistles and stinging nettles and scarred by horses and sheep.
The ridge finally achieved, the view could have been stupendous if it wasn't for the persistent dullness induced by the dull weather.
The walk along the ridge for about seven km was pretty easy with some pretty benign hills and often along a path paved with huge stone blocks, through the more sodden areas.
Occasionally the slate stones would be poorly seated and rocked, squirting foul, black peat laden water onto the back of your legs, as a unexpected surprise.

And now for the descent

At Pen y Beacon the trail did its descent, around Hay Bluff, called that I guess as it overlooked Hay on Wye, and across quite a large open area of common.
At this stage we crossed paths with quite a few walkers, reminding us that today was Saturday.
The track then descended quite steeply through an open field, offering our best views of Hay, to date, so we sat and admired the view and our lunches.

Hay on Wye from lunch spot

After lunch we followed a creek, called appropriately Cusop Dingle!!
This took us into Hay on Wye, through the car park where we found our car, so assumed Sue must be close by.
Hay on Wye is supposed to have the largest concentration of second hand bookshops in the world, and it certainly has a lot.
We wandered round and round until Eve and Margaret were ready to rebel, unless I phoned Sue to establish her exact whereabouts. Then lo and behold there she was walking up the street.
Our B and B is behind the Cinema Bookshop, which is as the name infers is a bookshop, in the old Hay on Wye cinema.
After a shower, I had some time on my own around the town, dropping into the various bookshops, checking out various authors and generally fiddling about.
Sometimes it is so good to be by yourself!