Date walked: 10th May 2023

Distance; About 7 miles

Map used: Ordnance Survey OL 13 Brecon Beacons National Park – with the route downloaded onto my phone using the OS Maps app.

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Its been a while since I posted from the Monmouthshire Way (well, from anywhere in fact), but as I returned to my files  I was shocked to discover that I hadn’t posted this section of the path which Paul and I did in May last year.

So in order to get over this oversight, I’m going to race through this section and hopefully get the next post out soon. This is part of Stage 6 of the Way.

We had finsihed the last walk at Cwmyoy where we had left a car right by the wonderful church. It was Pauls car and I was feeling knackered so I had  left him to trudge up the hill to retrieve it but I’ll start with some pics of the church that I took at the beginning of the day.

Note the wonky tower

The path up to the church has some rather beautfully engraved paving stones.

And the church interior is rather wonderful for its simple (and also wonky) architecture.

In the churchyard there is a beautiful simple stone bench – someone here appreciates stone carving.

To get a real apprecaition at just how wonky the tower is you need to walk around the back of the church.

Inside the church there’s a board on the wall that explains that the wonkiness is due to a landslip.

The church is near the top of a steep lane. On the way down we passed what we concluded might have been the ruins of a cider mill.

The path heads across a field…

… crosses the river Honddu by way of a footbridge…

… then climbs a steep track, passing one of the zillion railway goods carriages that are strewn around the Welsh landscape…

… and a simple cottage.

One half of which would have been to accommodate livestock

Pause for a pic.

You can see Cwmyoy chuch in the distance

As we climbed we could see The Skirrid across the valley.

The track was contained by a stone wall and  outgrown coppiced and moss covered trees. Beautiful.

.Much admired by Paul, also.

Lichen on a stone slab stile also got admired…..

… and on a weather worn tree stump.

Without me remembering they were there we passed the garden writer Stephen Andertons home and The Pant (where Jeremy Swift has made a garden which was remarkable when we saw it many years ago) arriving at a crossroads that if you turned right would lead you up a dead end valley to the garden at Nant y Bedd. 

So quite a little garden hot spot.

This place is called Forest Coal Pit. From there it was a bit of a slog up the side of Sugar Loaf, relieved by admiring some ordinary sheep…

… and some fancy ones.

The slopes of the hill were covered in thick bracken.

This really was quite steep and I slowed down to a fast snails pace.

We enjoyed another fine view of The Skirrid….

… and admired an excellently constructed stone wall….

… before, triumphantly, reaching the summit.

Not our first time here.

Its not a bad view from the top of Sugar Loaf, even on a dull day.

From there it was down hill all the way (boom boom) on a badly worn path….

… until we reached the edge of the National Trust’s  Parc Lodge estate.

The path takes a tree lined track to near Llwyn Du where we needed to leave our route to retrieve the car from the nearby little car park.

Ok, thats my writers block, broken. I’ll get the next installenet up before the Spring.