A twenty-one kilometre walk doesn’t sound that far does it?

We walked out the door of our lovely little Castle View Hotel in Wales this morning, hung a sharp right to walk over the River Wye bridge, and once across, there we were in bonnie ol’ England.

We walked through about a million different landscapes; up steep dirt and rock trails, through wide meadows filled with bleating sheep, in forests where we were sure Robin Hood and his Merry Men would leap out any minute and through groves of trees that were only missing Monty Python’s Knights of Ni!

We scared a deer, dozens of pheasant and listened to nothing but the drone of bees and the deepest, greenest silence. We climbed over stiles, though thankfully, most of them have been replaced with the turn-stiles; a remarkable alternative that requires no lifting of screamin’ knees to navigate.

We left Chepstow at 9:30 a.m., found every sign and didn’t take one wrong turn(!) and didn’t stop walking until 5:30 p.m. in Redbrook; a full-days work if ever there was one

At points, I’m quite sure I was lurching more than walking, and the last 67 steps down into Redbrook, well… that just seemed like a rather cruel joke.

I would just like to state that hiking in British Columbia, with all those hills and mountains, was certainly good training, but it does not make this path an easy feat. I have a feeling that if each day’s hike is like today’s struggle, we are going to either be really fit…or dead.

When we were picked up in Redbrook, the taxi took us here to the lovely Bistro Prego (with rooms!) in Monmouth. I’m feeling almost-human again, especially since I had a wonderfully restorative soak in a lovely long tub and just finished a divine meal of fried courgette flowers stuffed with goat cheese followed by sea bass on a bed of spinach and piled with girolles ( which are identical to our chanterelles back home ). YUM!

And in case anyone’s concerned that we got to skip a few miles by getting picked up in Redbrook?

Never fear! Tomorrow morning the remarkably organized team at Drover Holidays has arranged someone to take us back to where we were dropped off, so that we can keep ourselves honest and walk, stagger and lurch, every single foot of this path.