Despite the joys of reading my brilliant prose, yesterday’s post might have left you feeling a bit bad, given all that rain and grumpiness. My mood wasn’t at its best. But nothing cures a down walker like waking to sunshine and having breakfast while two dogs hover with a mix of affection and hope that you’ll feed them. Mouse and Toby helped get the morning off to a good start.

After breakfast, I got on my way at about 8am, trying to make it to Welshpool in time to hike down to the nearby Powis Castle before their closing time (last admittance into the house itself at 4:15). And the day conspired with me, with glorious sun, cool temperatures, and ground with such a gentle, long roll to it that it was almost like walking in Chicago. (okay, an overstatement, flatlanders, but compared to what I’ve been doing, the first five miles were a breeze.

I was in a giddy enough mood to be singing again, this time playing a game that has always, inexplicably, cracked me up. I do a passable Julie Andrews singing impression (not for parties or anything, but in the shower, I can over-enunciate my words with glorious precision, just like Julie), and I amuse myself by finding the least likely songs for Julie Andrews to sing. Try “The Name Game” song, for instance. Imagine her singing “Shirley, Shirley bo Birley Bonana fanna fo Firley / Fee fy mo Mirley, Shirley!” You get the idea. So this morning’s selection was the theme song from Smokey and the Bandit. “East bound and down, eighteen wheels a-rolling. We’re going to do what they say can’t be done…” Try singing that slowed down with precise diction and gentle emotion, just like Julie. See if you don’t laugh.

I got so spoiled that a little hill climb of maybe 80 meters gain in a quarter mile had me grousing.

And speaking of grouse (sorry, terrible transition…), I have somehow entered the fowl zone of Wales. As I started the steady climb up the aptly named Long Hill (it’s a steady rise on road and trail for four miles or more), I started encountering wild fowl in profusion.

And they just kept showing up in my path.

And I realized with some embarrassment that I was not sure if they were, as I assumed, pheasants. (The path in that second photo, by the way, was in a section where they are cutting down some trees. Hence the heavy machinery). The white ring around the neck of a few (see the one lower right in second photo) suggested pheasant to me, but then I started thinking “Am I sure?” I was raised in suburbs, lived the last twenty years in a city, so my exposure to wild birds is mostly limited to seagulls and pigeons.

Of course, this last shot makes this one look practically like a hawk, but I’m sticking with pheasant until someone chimes in in the comments.

Long Hill climaxes with views down to Welshpool from the Beacon Ring, an ancient hill fort site that is now a wooded ring of trees with a ditch around it.

Then the path plunges down through fields of my old pals sheep to reach the Montgomery Canal, a long canal that, after years of neglect, is gradually being restored as a navigable canal, section by section.

And of course, it has a path next to it, flat and covered in gravel. The gravel is a mixed blessing—easy to walk on, but likely to get in my shoe. I wasn’t complaining, because I knew it was only two miles along the canal to Welshpool, and it was only about 1:30, so I had plenty of time to walk the few extra miles to Powis Castle.

And so I did. It’s a spectacular hillside edifice that began life as a medieval castle to guard the Welsh border against those evil English. (This is some 50o years after Offa built a dyke to protect the Mercians against those evil Welsh.) Then it became a residence for a titled family, and remained a residence right up into the middle of the 20th century.

It’s now in the hands of the National Trust, which maintains the famous gardens and sculpted topiary, and allows people to tour (but not photograph) the castle interior, with many rooms that the owner circa 1900 had lovingly redecorated in a Jacobean style. It’s got Elizabethan ceiling carving, fake Jacobean panelling, big chunky furniture, tapestries, and portraits of past earls as far as the eye can see.

It’s also a hugely popular destination, as evidenced by the car park (That’s parking lot to you Americans. Jeez, I’m getting so Anglicized after three weeks here). It costs 11 pounds to get into the castle and gardens, but it was worth it.

And, just to underline the idea that the people who owned this place were richer than you can imagine, the NT still keeps a peacock hanging out in the courtyard.

And that’s a bird identification even a city boy like me can be confident in.

What a great day.

Miles walked: On trail, 13.5 (a guestimate, since I had to add getting back to the trail in the morning from the B&B), but an additional 3.5 for the castle sidetrip. So, let’s call it 18 miles.