Today's Medieval Trackway walk

I had to take advantage of today's sunshine, and although I am still shaking off a bit of a cold, I haven't been too bad and thought I was up to a longer walk today so planned to revisit the old (Medieval) trackway which joins our valley to the top Llanfynydd road.  You can just about see it going from left to right in the middle of the photo.

It was in use until probably the early part of this century but I need to check the tithe maps to see when the steep lane up past Goitre and meeting the top road at Pantglas was joined up, instead of going through the farmyards.  This photo shows the view up the valley (the lane I was on is between the hedgerows which go past the fir tree to the right of the photo, by the old cottage (once much smaller and belonging to the Gamekeeper).  As you can see, our valley is quite heavily wooded still and in times when the trackway was in use, would have been more heavily wooded still.

As you can see in this photo, the sides of this holloway track are rock, covered in plantings of ash and hazel, and there is a rocky base to this road beneath the mud and the little streams of run-off water running down it.  My trainers got pretty mucky (I find them more comfortable than my walking boots).

I hadn't noticed this well before.  It would probably have served the cottage on the hillside to the left - a walk of about 1/4 of a mile for water though . . .

The track ahead, slightly less muddy (at one point it was pretty boggy and I nipped across a fallen fence into the field, which was a great improvement).  The gate marks the end of Jim's land and the beginning of the next farm's.

Looking back down the valley.  The fir trees were planted by earlier occupants in our valley - probably the Lewis family who built Upton Hall around the 1920s.

Another valley view.

A group of Rams were sunbathing in the mud!

Distant view across to Black Mountain, almost hidden in the misty distance.

The photo above and the next three show the extent of the trackway.  This one is nearest the Llanfynydd road, and the bottom one nearest Jim's.



Above - the field of Rams.

The first brave Red Campion keeps some young Nettles and Cow Parsley leaves company.

The lane up the valley - behind me in this photo as I was a mile or so from home.  The walk was about 6 miles (probably a teensy bit under) and I clocked up over 15,000 steps.

Finally, some winter colour in these Ivy leaves.

Tomorrow I hope to find time to put up the photos and a few words of a visit to Clyro (near Hay-on-Wye) last Friday.