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WALK 1

Llanfair Hill and Offa’s Dyke

Start/Finish	Roadside lay-by opposite the Lloyney Inn, Lloyney (SO 244 759)
Distance	6 miles (9.7km)
Total ascent	1050ft (320m)
Grade	Moderate
Time	4hr
Terrain	Farm tracks, grass ridge, country lanes
Map	OS Explorer 201 – Knighton & Presteigne
Refreshments	Lloyney Inn at start/end of walk

Offa’s Dyke is never more impressive than on Llanfair Hill. Here its eighth-century earthworks are in pristine order and rise to 430m above sea level. For the first hundred yards you’re in Wales, but as you leave the little hamlet of Lloyney behind and cross the pretty stone bridge spanning the River Teme you enter Shropshire. Soon you’re climbing across lofty pastures looking across to the soft velvety hills of the Marches. When you reach the Dyke you have a splendid, easy striding ridge with that ‘on top of the world’ feeling.

Turn left along the lane signed to Llanfair Waterdine, go over the bridge spanning the River Teme, then turn right along the lane signed Monaughty Poeth and Skyborry Green. After 50m turn left off the road onto a stony driveway, and after a few paces go through the right of two gates. The track becomes a path beyond the next gate but continues in the same direction, following the hedge on the right.

Go over a stile on the right before turning right along a grassy bridleway with a hedge and fence on the right and an overgrown hedge on the left. This soon becomes a sunken track leading eastwards across high fields. In wet conditions most walkers use the brow of the bank on the left.

The way crosses a prominent farm track and continues, with the hedge still on the right, to the top of a pastured ridge (SO 252 762). The route now descends eastwards to meet a stony track just north of its junction with a country lane. Turn left along the ‘Jack Mytton Way’ track, which, after ¾ of a mile, turns right and passes the farm at Llandinshop.

JACK MYTTON

‘Mad’ Jack Mytton was a highly colourful 19th-century squire whose estate centred on Halston Hall, near Oswestry – an estate he inherited at the age of two following his father’s early death. His eccentricities surfaced early when he was expelled from both Westminster and Harrow schools. After a brief career as an army officer, from which he was encouraged to resign after bouts of heavy drinking and gambling, he returned to Shropshire where he bribed the locals to vote for him to be their MP. He was successful in this but only attended one session at Westminster.

The following years brought more scandals, one of which involved Mytton taking up a bet to ride his horse into the Bedford Hotel in Leamington Spa and up the staircase. Horse and rider then jumped over the heads of diners in the restaurant. Fortunately no one was hurt.

Mytton’s first wife died of natural causes, but his second, frightened by his unpredictability, ran away. Hunting was a passion to Mad Jack and he had 2000 dogs, with whom he was often seen fighting (he was even known to bite them). He loved to fight. Once he took exception to a miner who interrupted his hunt; the miner eventually submitted after 20 rounds.

High life, including much drinking, led to his downfall, and owing money everywhere he fled to France. When he returned he was sent to debtors’ prison where he perished aged 38.

Ignore the left turn beyond the barns and instead climb the track ahead. After 200m leave the track for a bridleway on the right, which begins beyond a farm gate. The path heads uphill and slightly north of east across a large field, passing a waymarking post near the far end. This directs the route to a gate in the hollow on the right just beyond a shallow ditch.

Through the gate the hedge is now on the left. After passing through three fields the route joins the Offa’s Dyke long distance path. Turn left following the track, then left again onto the footpath along the top of Offa’s Dyke itself. The dyke path crosses the ‘Jack Mytton’ farm lane abandoned earlier and another one further north, beyond which it heads for the heights of Llanfair Hill.

On Offa’s Dyke approaching Llanfair Hill’s trig point

Where the path meets the ridge track used by the Offa’s Dyke long distance footpath, turn left along that track, passing to the east of the trig point. After another half mile leave the Offa’s Dyke path for a bridleway on the left, descending WSW from a field gate. The path stays close at first to the unnamed hollow on the right.

On meeting a broad grassy track, follow it downhill before turning left (south) beyond a gate onto a rutted, sometimes muddy farm track descending into the hollow of Cwm Mawr. Ignore the track forking left and the one descending right down Cwm Mawr, and instead go straight ahead on the track climbing to the southern rim of the hollow.

A waymarker post shows the bridleway’s right fork away from the track. The faint path now traverses the high slopes beneath the rim of the cwm. Stay close to the rim as a line of cow tracks can divert you too low. The path comes to a bridleway gate at SO 245 784; through this bear slightly left to reach a gate in the far corner of the next pasture.

The bridleway wanted, one of two here, goes straight on rather than left. It’s a grassy track, flanked by trees. After a short way it becomes rutted with tractor wheel-tracks and descends the hillside to meet a country lane near the farm of Bwlch. Turn left along the quiet lane, which winds through a valley past Black Hall and its chalets to a T-junction just east of Llanfair Waterdine.

Mountaineer John Hunt (Baron Hunt), leader of the first successful Everest expedition in 1953, settled in Llanfair Waterdine after Word War II. The village hall is known as the Everest Hall in tribute to him.

Bridge over the Teme at Lloyney

Turn left here then right to cross the bridge over the River Teme and return to Lloyney.