At the risk of losing all my readers in one go, I’d like to talk about William Wordsworth for a minute. Any of you who took a course on British Poetry, or for the more intense nerds among you something more focused such as The Romantic Poets, will recall that Wordsworth wrote a poem called “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” most commonly referred to simply as “Tintern Abbey.” He’s out for a walk with his sister Dorothy, and as they stroll through the hilly paths “above” the ruins of an abbey in Wales (by above he means up-river), he starts musing on how he’s changed since he last walked these paths.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

(I promise not to do the whole poem, which is quite long and has a lot going on) The first big movement of the poem is William reflecting on how he was previously a callow youth, gamboling through the woods and generally being young, but now he appreciates a deeper communion with nature and how it connects him to the larger sublime (which is in effect God for Wordsworth). He’s so sophisticated and deep now. William was 28. That kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it. Even in an era when a man of 28 was well into his maturity, it’s still not that far removed from the 23-year-old goofball wandering in the woods having more self-centered raptures.

I was thinking about Wordsworth and “Tintern Abbey,” because on the first day of the Wye Valley Walk, you pass by Tintern Abbey. That’s it at the top of this post. And this is not the first time I have been to Tintern Abbey. Eleven years have past, eleven summer with the length of eleven long winters, since I have been here. I walked past the abbey on my Offa’s Dyke ramble, and even wrote briefly about Wordsworth then. The Offa’s Dyke Trail and the Wye Valley Walk are close cousins for the southernmost parts of the routes– as I walked the hills to the west of the Wye today, I was aware that the Offa’s Dyke path was somewhere in the hills over to the east of the river.

As I hiked today, I was thinking about how much has changed for me since then. I wasn’t then a callow youth gamboling through the hills; I was in my 40s. And now I am in my 50s, and in some ways I don’t feel that different. I shan’t be enthralling you with descriptions of my newfound rapturous relation to the sublime resulting from a walk in the hills. I might whine a bit about how age has changed me; there’s a bit more of me to heft up those hills (thank you, Covid pandemic, for giving us all an excuse to snack more), and the knees and ankles complain a bit more. But in other ways, many things have changed. When I took that walk eleven years ago, I imagined a vast future of walks in front of me. Now I am more aware that a time will come–In ten years? Fifteen?–when I won’t be able to manage a few hundred miles of walking up and down hills.

But let us not dwell on gloomy things, because it was a very good if long day of walking, and sometimes my thoughts were simply filled with pleasure at being out in nature and on the move for a long haul again.

The Wye River Walk starts at Chepstow Castle, which overlooks the river, and quickly rises through town and up into the hills.

You pass through a community center parking lot, and at a bit of public art, plunge into the woods.

Soon, the trail enters Piercefield Woods, a huge forest that was once the estate of a gent named Valentine Morris. He loved to walk in nature, and to treat his guests to walks in nature (the wealthy had a lot of time to fill in the course of a day, so they cultivated a lot of hobbies including walks), so he had dramatic walks created through the forest, with little viewpoints for pausing. There’s a grotto (which would have been garishly decorated with shells and crystals, though now it’s just a stone nook) and a cool little cave you have to walk through on the path, with stunning views that were created in part by cutting down some trees strategically to enhance the views.

The path winds through this green forest, which is especially nice on a hot day because the shady forest is notably cooler than the sunny fields. After five miles and a bit of pleasant walking in a forest, the path descends through some fields (first cow sighting, not photographed) and down to Tintern Abbey and the village of Tintern, which is strung around a bend in the river like a necklace of houses and shops draped along the riverside.

After the bend in the river through town, the path follows an old railway line, with flat walking, until it rises again into the hills. Imagine if you will a few mild oaths as I made my way up steep dirt paths in the woods. For some reason, I got stubborn and didn’t take off my pack and break out my walking poles, which made the ascents and descents that much harder. And on this second high hill part of the path, I made my first, but I assume not last, bone-headed mistake. Where the trail crossed through a forest preserve parking lot, I met a befuddled family group (five or six kids, four middle-aged people and an older couple I quickly deduced were the grandparents of the rambunctious youngsters). One of the adults asked me if I knew if there was a waterfall. “Not in the direction I just came from,” I replied. He then showed me an Instagram video of a lovely waterfall, and said he’d seen that and thought they could view it before their lunch reservation. Ever the one to help, I noted that I had an Ordnance Survey map and a guidebook (well, pages torn from a guidebook, as is my custom for easier consultation while walking), and I quickly worked out that these must be Cleddon Falls, which were ahead of us, and in fact not a quick stroll- more like a mile away. So they hopped in their cars, and I went on my merry way. About twenty minutes later, the path emerged at a little parking area with a lot of signs for Cleddon Falls and some confusing paths. And there were their cars, and I could hear the kids somewhere down a path.

And it’s here I went all bone-headed. I was so excited to have helped them out that I failed to notice that the description of my trail said it “came to Cleddon and it’s famous falls,” but nothing about following the Cleddon Falls path. Without looking for a Wye Valley Walk trail sign, I bounded down a switchback trail, soon overtaking the group, who were puzzling on how far down it was to the falls. I couldn’t tell from my previous glance at the map, which was not in sufficient scale to give the detail we all really really needed. So I forged ahead, doing about six steep switchback down the hill before I got a very bad feeling indeed… not only could I not hear a waterfall, but I suddenly felt sure I would have remembered from pre-reading the trail notes the night before if there was a steep set of switchbacks. Broke out my pages. Mild oaths ensued (“Zounds” and the like). I turned around and headed back up the hill, those treacherous few hundred feet of elevation wasted. The family had determined long before me that the waterfall, wherever the hell it is, was either dried up or too far down to be worth it, and were long gone. I got back to that parking area at the top, and about ten seconds of looking around showed me the trail marker I had missed across the road.

This was particularly annoying, because my whole first day was a race against time. No food service after 3pm on Sunday in the village of Redbrook (Covid has shrunk the hours of a lot of places), so I had left at 6:30am in hopes of making the 14.5 miles in time for lunch at a pub across the river from Redbrook. Now, that was more like 15 miles, and I was getting tired and slowing down.

It wouldn’t be until very late in the descent that I finally acknowledged that the poles were not just better for the knees but in fact essential to navigating the sometimes slick and treacherously leaf-covered path as it plummeted down five or six hundred feet in a half mile.

And once I descended from the heights, at least having taken out my poles to ease the strain, I was walking along another piece of old railway path (same line as just after Tintern) in the hot sun, when my water ran out. I’d planned for heat, with about three liters of water, but I should have aimed for four. So I hiked on with a dry mouth for the last few miles, trying not to think about water and hoping that I’d make it to the Boat in before they closed at 3pm. I made it at 2:15, but they had stopped lunch service and could only offer drinks. I gulped down a pint of Diet Coke (needing that caffeine boost) and crossed the bridge into Redbrook, where, to my great good fortune, the tiny village shop was open until 4 and had some sandwiches and wraps in a refrigerated case. Tempted to climb into the case with them, I instead bought a tasty chicken tikka wrap and found a shady spot to rest until my B&B hosts would be home and ready to take in guests at 4pm. This is me looking dehydrated but content.

One final observation: I am walking through the massive Forest of Dean, so it should come as no surprise that there is a lot of public art made out of trees. Enjoy these examples from the old repurposed railway line. The medieval grouping was just after Tintern, and the two fish were near Redbrook.