Glyndwr's Way, Page 2

We didn't return to Llanbadarn Fynydd the next morning, but followed a route suggested by our B&B hostess, cutting across the countryside and through a few farms, till we joined up again with Glyndwr's Way. At one of these farms we saw a (frightening) sign which we saw many times later. It looks like a “neighborhood watch” sign, but for sheep farms:

As we walked through another farm, they were bringing in a bunch of sheep. We chatted with the farmer, who was happy that at one o'clock the ban on movement of sheep was to be lifted. The foot-and-mouth cases a month or so before had brought on the movement restrictions, keeping farmers from taking sheep to market. He said they had picked out the fat sheep to take. Sadly, for the farmer at least, just a few days later a new case of foot-and-mouth was found, and the restrictions were reinstated.

Not much later we were back on Glyndwr’s Way, for a lovely stretch of walking. We were on a ridge, with views in every direction, springy turf underfoot, and gorse surrounding us.

After half an hour we turned off the ridge and descended. On the hilltop in front of us, but not actually on our route, was another earthworks, again all that remained of a 13th century castle.

Down, then up, as always. Here I am at the trig point at the top of the next hill:

The next hilltops were covered with a different, shorter variety of gorse, called pin-cushion gorse. We loved it, too!

As we came down and were about to enter a woods, the scene seemed particularly lovely, with a rowan tree beside the gate:

We descended to the village of Abbey-cwm-hir. ( "Cwm" means valley and "Hir" means long.) Our guidebook had said that a house there always flies Glyndwr's flag-- we were excited to see it!

As the name implies, there was once an abbey here. It was founded in 1143, but suffered many tribulations, first during the wars between Llewelyn ap Gruffydd and Henry III, then from Owain Glyndwr, and finally from Henry VIII. Glyndwr thought that the monks were English spies, and sacked the abbey in 1401. Then in 1536, during Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Abbeys, it was demolished. Now there's very little left.

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last true Prince of Wales, was killed near here, and secretly buried in the abbey. There's a modest grave monument for him.

As we walked up the hill behind Abbey Cwm Hir, we kept hearing motorcycles. Then we began to see them. Finally, as we crossed a track at the top of the hill, we had an explanation:

At the bottom of the woods we crossed a pretty footbridge, climbed to a road, and came to a diversion sign sending us along the road for a mile or so. There were several of these diversions along the route; our guess is that some farmers objected to walkers. But it was a pleasant enough road, with no traffic.

And on the other side of the hill we joined a track down into the village of Bwlch-y-Sarnau.

As there were no places to stay in Bwlch-y-Sarnau, we had to walk 2 1/2 miles off route. We had arranged to stay at the Mid-Wales Inn, and were very glad that we had. It was an old inn, and we very much liked Arthur and Andy, the proprietors.

The next morning while walking through a large forestry area, we kept seeing big holes in the bank beside the path. Probably badgers, we guess.

We also frequently passed small slate quarrying pits. The slate here makes distinctive shards.

This mangle made an unusual farm sign. (I can't say "unique", as we saw another later!) We had to check to see whether there was anything interesting in the box beside it. (There wasn't.)

As we crossed the next hill a huge wind farm began to come into view. We saw it the rest of the day, in fact.

While we sat beside the lane eating lunch, this farmer stopped and chatted. He was very friendly, and we had a good long talk.

As we huffed and puffed our way up this hill, we could stop and look back at the wind farm.

And then later we could look back across the valley and see the lane where we had talked with the farmer an hour or so earlier. We had asked him about the almost-rectangular blue-green field; he told us that it was rape seed that he was going to plow under for soil enrichment.