Offas Dyke Day 5 Hay on Wye to Kington

Day 5 pictures
Of course it rained most of the night, so our hope for a totally rainfree walk seemed dashed.
Breakfast takes on the usual tenor, cereal, orange juice, yogurt to either eat on the spot or take for lunch and toast and jam. The others have scrambled egg or other varieties of the same.
We walk out of our accommodation, as today it is right on Offas Dyke and head off.
Sue passes us in the main street and is gone.

River Wye

It's over the Wye River and it is quite a good river, fast flowing and clean. It's then along the river bank and across fields, until the rain starts and we stop to jacket up.
Of course we then have a climb so the wet outside joins the wet sweaty  inside and it is all quite unpleasant.
It only rains for about 30 minutes and finally I take off my jacket as I  am fed up with feeling so hot.
It's a good move as it doesn't rain again all day. In fact the day gets better and better and we finish in sunshine, but more of that later.
The walk is undulating over pretty fields through flocks of sheep and the occasional herd of cows, that are negotiated with great care.
We meet up with three guys coming the other way whom we have passed every day over the last four days. They were having bets as to what time we would cross paths, we were walking pretty fast, so one was very pleased.
They had parked their car at a place called Newchurch which we got to  quite quickly, even though it was about eight km, our days walk was about 24 km.
After Newchurch came our first good hard climb up to a hill that has an unpronounceable name Disgwylfa Hill). Of course this meant we had to come off it, which we duly did after about half an hour and descended into Gladestry a small village of little note other than a pub called the Royal Oak.
We stopped here for lunch on a bench that has a sign telling us refreshments were available at the local church.
It also had an overflowing rubbish bin, that I failed to take a picture of!!
Lunch dealt with, it was then another hard climb up Hergest Ridge, a climb of about 150 metres that afforded us great views of the surrounding countryside, west, south and north but not east, as that's the way the ridge ran.

Back to Hay Bluff

We could see right back to yesterdays, Hay Bluff, and over to Brecon Beacons, and north to heavens know where, but I guess we'll find out in due course.
The ridge is a few kms long and we finally get to a point where we can see Kington, our goal, and then it's the descent off the ridge along a wide grass path that could be the fairway of Royal Adelaide.
The ridge is populated with sheep, of course and a large number of horses, many with foals.
The bracken, in parts, is cut and rolled into what at home we would call hay rolls.
Some fellow walkers we meet tell us that bracken causes stomach cancer in sheep, that they used to poison the bracken until they stopped that, as the poison washed into streams, They now cut it roll it and then do something with it.
Into the outskirts of Kington we stroll, it is only about 2.30PM and we have done well.
Kington is one of the typical strip villages with a High Street with shops and little else.
It is like someone died, it's quiet, all the shops are closed except the supermarket, and there is no one around.
We find our digs however Sue is not there, she is trying to intercept us back up the track-well it didn't work.
Finally we all get together, there's few places to eat in Kington on a Sunday evening so we settle for the nearest pub.
It is great, the gaffer (boss) is great fun and we have a great meal-so good to have a stir fry after all the other pub meals.
The weather looks good, we have 23 kilometres to do tomorrow, so it should be a good day.