The Offa's Dyke Path - Guidebook to the National Trail

The Offa's Dyke Path is a national trail along the Welsh Marches that runs 170 miles from Chepstow in the south to Prestatyn. Route split into 14 stages (average 13 miles). The earthwork dyke was constructed by King Offa of Mercia in the 8th century.

The Offa’s Dyke Path: the Route

In the last quarter of the 8th century, Offa, the powerful King of Mercia and overlord of the greater part of England, constructed a great dyke to mark out the western boundary of his kingdom and control incursions from Wales. Twelve hundred years later, this great linear earthwork, the longest in Britain, became the inspiration for a long-distance footpath traversing the border country of England and Wales for 170 miles, from Sedbury Cliffs on the River Severn to Prestatyn near the estuary of the Dee. The Offa’s Dyke Path, a national trail (backed by government funding) generously signed and waymarked throughout, was opened in July 1971.

Undertaken in its entirety, the route offers an attractive but at times demanding prospect for the long-distance walker, and should only be pursued after careful preparation and due regard to the season. If this seems rather too much of a challenge, all is not lost, for in common with most of Britain’s long-distance trails, the Offa’s Dyke Path – or the ODP, as it is more convenient to refer to it – may be enjoyed in a variety of ways. A number of sections are easily adapted to circular walks, for example the Lower Wye Valley, the Black Mountains, and the Clwydian Range in the north. Or you may choose to make your exploration in short bursts, taking a few days or a long weekend to travel between conveniently accessible points, and perhaps completing the whole route over a period of a year or two as opportunity permits (and you succumb to Offa’s Dyke fever!).

The ODP makes its way through varied, sometimes wild, often remote and frequently superb scenery, linked by a succession of historic towns and attractive villages. A broad-brush description at this point will serve to put colour on the canvas; the finer details will emerge as progress is made through the wholly delightful border country that has played such an important part in the history of these islands.  It is an intricate weaving of paths, ancient tracks and quiet lanes, sometimes favouring England, sometimes Wales, and occasionally carefully treading a neutral division between the two, following the spirit if not always the line of the dyke. Sometimes the ODP makes diversions from the dyke’s course to seek a more scenic route, and indeed, there are many stretches where the dyke was never built.

The route is described from south to north because of the value this gives in the lighting of the landscape. From the south, the way follows the high wooded cliffs above the Wye, but with opportunities to make a closer acquaintance with what is one of our finest rivers. A descent is made from the superb viewpoint of the Kymin at 250m (820ft) to the historic town of Monmouth (which in recent years has been discovering it may be even older than had been suspected – see ‘Monmouth’, section 2).

A tangle of twisting lanes and field paths thread their way through the rolling sheep pastures of Monmouthshire to reach the foot of the Black Mountains at Pandy. The long passage over the mountains by the Hatterrall Ridge, which peaks at around 700m (2300ft), marks the highest point of the ODP, and in good weather, whatever the season, is also one of the highlights of the walk.

After the high-level trek from Pandy, which completes the first 50 miles, the walker may enjoy a leisurely browse round the many bookshops of Hay-on-Wye, now following a new career as a centre of the second-hand book trade. Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire and Powys have been visited, and now the ODP cuts across the northwestern tip of Herefordshire, descending from 426m (1400ft) high Hergest Ridge to the Saxon town of Kington, with its horrific legend of Black Vaughan (see ‘Kington’, section 5).

Offa’s great earthwork, missing from our route since leaving the Wye Valley village of Lower Redbrook, is met again on the way to Knighton (or Tref-y-Clawdd, ‘the town on the dyke’). From Knighton a long climb above the valley of the River Teme provides some of the finest sections of the dyke, which is at its highest on Llanfair Hill – here the bottom of the ditch to the top of the bank may be as much as 6m (20ft).

The walker is soon passing through the still remote area of Shropshire’s Clun Forest, and after bisecting the ancient Kerry Ridgeway the path leads on to Montgomery. Bypassed by main roads and time, Montgomery is a fine example of a small county town that has changed little over the past two centuries.

The Severn, a very different river from that seen briefly below Sedbury Cliffs at the start of the ODP, is met again some 110 miles on at Buttington. Here there is a diversion to Welshpool, via the Montgomery Canal, to enjoy the terraced gardens and rich furnishings of Powis Castle. More leisurely walking by the canal and the Severn leads to Llanymynech, with its hill fort and heritage site. The ODP continues to a true border town, Oswestry, named after Oswald, the Christian King of Northumbria killed here by Penda, an ancestor of Offa, in the battle of ad642 (see ‘Oswestry’, section 11).

Llangollen is reached after visiting Chirk Castle, and a not unadventurous crossing of the Dee via Telford’s famous 37m (120ft) high Pont Cysyllte aqueduct. Llangollen is another place to pause for breath and explore the town. You may wish to visit Valle Crucis Abbey, Plas Newydd (home of the ‘Ladies of Llangollen’), the Horseshoe Falls, or take a trip on the steam railway or on a horse-drawn barge, or pay your respects to the ancient kings of Powys at Eliseg’s Pillar.

The route continues via the Panorama Walk to Pen-y-stryt and the long trek over the Clwydian Range, peaking at the jubilee tower on Moel Famau at 553m (1817ft). The final stretch from Bodfari takes the walker to Prestatyn on the narrow coastal strip of north Wales, with its holiday camps providing perhaps the greatest contrast of the whole journey.

Historical Setting

We tread troubled territory along this fluid border, which has moved with the ebb and flow of a tide governed by the relative strengths of those either trying to retain their homeland, or determined to add fresh territory to their dominions. Not one found it an easy task.
Following the Roman invasion of ad43, there was a spirited British resistance, and two names stand out from the history of these times. The first is Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni in the Fen country. She led a large army in a fierce attack that overwhelmed Colchester, put London to the torch and destroyed Verulamium (now St Albans), before the Iceni in turn were almost annihilated in ad62.

A decade or so earlier Caractacus, the son of Cunobelinus, who ruled wisely and well from his capital at Colchester, had led a strong opposition to the Romans. After Caractacus inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Roman legions in the Essex marshes, the Emperor Claudius retrieved the situation by ordering a new campaign. The recapture of Colchester ended resistance in the south, for a time.

By around ad50 the Romans, under Ostorius Scapula, determined to put an end to the resistance that continued along the western borders, and to move their armies beyond the Severn. Somewhere in this border region a great battle took place, ending in the defeat and eventual capture of Caractacus. The site is not known, but speculative suggestions include: the British Camp set high above the Severn plain on the Malvern Hills; Church Stretton’s Caer Caradoc; a similarly named hill to the northeast of Knighton; and Llanymynech Hill on today’s border, and directly on the line of Offa’s Dyke.

The 7th and 8th centuries were a time of Mercian supremacy, and we return to this period of domination later (see ‘The Rise and Fall of the Kingdom of Mercia’, below). Following the decline of Mercia, however, the often-quarrelling Welsh princes found unity under Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, who had an unlikely ally in Aelfgar, the Earl of the East Angles who had been evicted from his territory.

Trouble erupted along the borders, with the Welsh raiding Hereford. In 1055 Harold, later to be king of England following the death of Edward the Confessor, was put in charge of a force sent to intercept the raiders. Further bloodshed was avoided by a truce agreed at Billingsley. The following year the Welsh resumed their raids, but a fresh reconciliation was arranged with Edward. The border dwellers enjoyed an uneasy peace until Gruffydd launched further raids on England in 1062. Harold was again dispatched with a force of cavalry, this time to Rhuddlan on the River Clwyd, just south of present-day Rhyl. The Welsh leader, having received news of Harold’s advance, made good his escape by sea.

It was winter, not the time for a sustained campaign, and Harold wisely contented himself with the destruction of Gruffydd’s palace and the burning of his remaining ships, but Harold was one of the ‘hard men’ of his day, and he did not forget. With the coming of summer 1063 he left by sea from Bristol on a bloody campaign of retribution.

Harold adopted the classic tactics of the guerrilla – moving swiftly, and raiding farms and villages for sustenance. The heavy armour of his foot soldiers was discarded, the cumbersome wagon trains carrying supplies, which dictated the pace of an army’s advance, were made redundant. The vengeance of Harold must have been terrible to behold, and although the Welsh fought with all their old ferocity, they were defeated time after time. Every able-bodied Welshman unfortunate enough to find himself in the path of the English was put to the sword, and as Gerald of Wales was later to record, at each battlesite a stone was erected bearing the legend ‘Here Harold was Victorious’.

With the conquest of 1066 the Normans came and studded the countryside with their castles. At first these were the simple earthen mound and timber fort of the motte and bailey; later, as the need arose, the castles we know today were built, stone bookmarks in the pages of history. Many of the greatest of these were built in the reign of Edward I as he strived to maintain a hold on the Welsh principality.

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last native-born Prince of Wales, so often referred to as Llywelyn the Last, now comes into the story of the border country. Henry III officially recognized his position, but on the succession of Edward 1, Llywelyn evaded taking the oath of loyalty. He was in conflict with other Welsh princes, and by 1276 engaged in open warfare with the king’s army under the command of Roger Mortimer.
Llywelyn was eventually obliged to acknowledge the king’s sovereignty and a few years of peace followed, but it was not to last long. By 1282, perhaps as the result of an insensitive regime by local administrators, Llywelyn and his brother Davydd were in revolt. Llywelyn was killed near Builth and his memorial is to be found at Cilmery.

The years move on and Owain Glyndwr steps to centre stage as he too proclaims himself Prince of Wales, but his story is reserved until we advance along Offa’s Dyke into what is sometimes called Glyndwr country (see section 11). In 1471, Edward IV established the Council of the Marches. Sitting at Ludlow and occasionally Shrewsbury, it supervised the affairs of Wales and the border counties for the next 200 years.

The English Civil War, starting in 1642, added its own distress to the territory, and an end to the era of castles, as siege cannons and starvation brought down their walls. In the 1840s, the Chartist riots resulted in a brief but potentially serious uprising that alarmed the government of the day, to the extent that it turned out the militia to deal with the crisis.

This (by no means complete) catalogue of bloodshed and disaster, when it seems that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse were on patrol along these unhappy borders, with scarcely a break to return to their stables, is not included just to add drama to the narrative – we shall meet the echoes of these turbulent days on the Marches as the veil is lifted on their story.

Practical Matters

Before completing this introduction with a brief history of the rise and fall of the Mercian kingdom, let’s consider some of the practical aspects of following the Offa’s Dyke Path.

The information in this guidebook is presented to allow flexibility in following the official route. While the official route is fully described, alternative routes and detours are also included, allowing visits to places of interest, or to find accommodation. In the information box that precedes each section of the route, these alternatives and detours are included in the ‘total’ mileage quoted, although the ‘official route total’ is also given.

The route is divided into 15 sections; these are somewhat arbitrary, and not all describe what might be considered a day’s walk – some are fairly long, others relatively short. The overall distance has been further subdivided within the sections to allow for shorter excursions, there-and-back exploration, or to assist in planning circular walks.