Now this is more like it. The Wye Valley Walk, as though sensing my annoyance, suddenly became well-marked after Fownhope, with only a few moments of hesitation until getting into the city of Hereford (cities are always poorly marked and hard to navigate on walking trails, so no points are subtracted for that). And the day provided as much variety of landscape as you could want: high pastures, farm roads, orchards, riverside trail, passing through back gardens, a long stretch on a high flood bank, some fields of crops. Yes, the last bit involved a long stretch of walking on the sidewalk beside a busy semi-urban route into the city of Hereford, but all was forgiven today. Maybe it was the short duration — only seven miles of trail and perhaps another mile and a half of city wandering — maybe it was the anticipation of the Hereford Cider Museum, for which I was oddly excited, or maybe it was just my body and mind finally settling into the walking zone. Whatever accounts for it, this was a good day.

Have I said what a nice accomodation the Bowens B&B is? They are still practicing social distancing (a rarity so far– I’ve barely seen anyone in a mask the whole trip, which is a bit worrying), so the day started with a small breakfast (I was not in the mood for eggs or meat, so it was cereal and toast) in the garden.

Before talking about the day’s walk, just a side note that the pandemic has been a hard blow to the already shrinking world of village pubs, with many closing for good, and others going to limited service. My Sunday experience, with no food in Redbrook after 3pm, was not an anomaly in rural Britain, so far as I can tell. In Fownhope, there are two pubs, and the Green Man was doing dinner (and a very nice Cajun chicken wrap it was), but the other pub is on a confusing mishmash of mostly lunch hours during the week, with limited evening hours and even more limited food. Friday and Saturday are the only days when the second pub has food after 5pm. (see photo below)

Leaving Fownhope meant walking back up the hillside, but I took my time and didn’t grumble at all, knowing that most of this short day would be very nice. And the cottages by the side of the very quiet country lane provided some interest.

Once I got back to the trail, the signage seemed better. Or maybe I have just learned the rhythm and pace of this guidebook and how attentive I have to be to the varying levels of description, with a mile sometimes dispatched in a sentence and a hundred yards sometimes taking fifty or sixty words. Here’s a quick sequence of two signs within ten yards that made things very clear. How novel!

Off the road and up that bridle path, the views opened out to high pastures and rolling hills stretching out into the distance, which soon came to a farm with crops and sheep and horses.

The path regains a very narrow country lane (one car wide, and too narrow for most American bloated SUVs) where I have really arrived in apple orchard country, and also am approaching Mordiford. There’s a fun legend about Mordiford and a dragon. The village was besieged by a dragon hanging out at the river fording point (Mordi-FORD, get it?), and a man condemned to death said he could kill the dragon in exchange for his release. He sealed himself in a barrel and had them put him in the river where the dragon was known to drink. He shot an arrow through the barrel’s bunghole, but the dragon’s expiring breath went into the same hole and killed the man. This legend is captured in a series of funny signs along a section where the Wye Valley Walk shares the path with the Mordiford Dragon Trail, a shorter local tourist path.

This dragon has a whole cluster of legends around it.

An explanation of the town name is that Mordred, younger son of a local king, set up a business “extracting tolls from travellers” and generally terrorized the locals at the fording of the Lugg, a stream that flows down into the Wye. Mordred’s Ford, Mordiford. Where does the dragon come in? Mordred’s standard included an image of a green dragon, which some think got mashed into the story about a dragon drinking at the ford.

From the very tiny village of Mordiford, the path crosses a bridge over the Lugg (no river fording for walkers, thank you very much), and then climbs onto a long flood bank, where I did unplanned duty as a shepherd to three sheep too dumb to catch that, as I was going along the top of the levee, all they had to do was go left or right off it and I’d get past them. Instead, we did ten minutes of them alternating between matching my pace forward, looking back at me, and breaking into intermittent little dashes ahead, as if by running ten yards they could be rid of me. Eventually, we came to a whole group of their friends, and the wisdom of the crowd led to a mass clearing of the levee so I could pass. For me, after 15 years of encountering them in the landscape. sheep remain hilarious.

The path eventually got down from the levee and I spent perhaps 600 yards walking down a country lane in the village (not that there was commerce on this lane, so don’t let the name confuse you) of Hampton Bishop, with big pretty houses peppered along either side. An inviting bench made a nice resting spot, and a local lady walking her dog stopped to chat. She confirmed the route ahead, told me she runs a holiday cottage on the road, and even turned out to know the owner of my accommodation in Hereford up ahead.

And in case you are in any doubt that we are near Wales, check out this house’s name.

No vowels were harmed in the making of that name.

The path crossed a corn field to get close to the river, and had a long stretch of walking along the edge of fields.

This was a bit rough going, because the path is very overgrown and really is just a strip of dirt about eight inches wide between crops and the woods next to the river. But my mood was good, and I enjoyed the butterflies and crows and the burble of the river to my left.

Eventually, the path turned right, back toward the road, and I quickly realized I was in the suburbs of Hereford. This meant that everything ahead would be city walking, mostly on sidewalks, with a few bits through riverside parks. But it was just after noon, I’d almost finished the day’s walking, and there was a cider museum to see!

Once I got into the city, I was a bit stunned by all the noise and people (yes, I am an city dweller, but after five days seeing fewer than ten people a day, the jangle of a busy city can throw me a bit). I made my way to the cider museum, and enjoyed learning about the process of making cider and its long history in Hereford. My pictures were mostly pretty bad– I still haven’t quite mastered the settings on my camera for indoor photography– but here’s a sampling.

I won’t lecture you on cider pressing (the hay in that first picture is standing in for the “cheese,” mashed up apples packed between layers of cloth that get pressed down to release all their juice) or the wonders of fermentation and bottling (to remove the cloudy yeast, bottles are left to stand upside down for several months; the neck of the bottle is frozen; the bottle is opened and pressure forces out the ice plug with all the sediment; the bottle is resealed for further fermentation). Whoops, I just lectured you on cider making. Sorry. Sort of.

My B&B for the night only opens after 2pm, so I had time to kill, which I spent sitting in the city’s pedestrian-only shopping district, people watching. The worst frustration of the day was hiking way out from the town center (perhaps three quarters of a mile) only to find there was no one at the B&B. I called the number on my cell phone. No answer. So I headed back down toward town and stopped at another pedestrian-only shopping street halfway back. Realizing that all the restaurants are far from the B&B, and not wanting to make this walk yet again, I popped into a Waitrose supermarket and bought a sushi meal to eat in my room. I called the B&B again, confirmed that now, at 3:30, there was someone to check me in, and made my way back. I spent the evening content to eat sushi in my room and watch silly British quiz shows.

Friday’s forecast calls for intermittent rain, and I have 11.5 miles to go, but I look forward to it. All is well.