Wye Valley Walk

Wye Valley Walk
Start: Chepstow
End: Plynlimon
Distance: 136 miles (219 km)
Time: 12-14 days
Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
Surface: Long-Distance Trail

Website: www.wyevalleywalk.org

One of the truly iconic river walks of Britain, the Wye Valley Walk meanders its way beneath the cliffs and through the meadows, ruins, and glades of the Wye Valley, following the country’s fifth longest river on its journey from the limestone gorges around Chepstow to the river’s source, the mountains around Plynlimon. It zigzags its way back and forth along the English-Welsh border, and along the way you pass a veritable tome of English and Welsh history, which begins with Chepstow Castle, one of the first stone-built Norman castles in Britain. Then comes the Angidy Ironworks, the first blast furnace in Britain, Monmouth Castle, the birthplace of HenryV; the Mappa Mundi at Hereford Castle, and a restored sixteenth-century Welsh longhouse at Gilfach Farm Nature Reserve, with its 400 species of lichen. Iron Age hill forts dot the landscape. Woodlands abound, too, including Merrivale Wood, with its ash, oak, and wild cherry trees, and the limestone grasslands of Common Hill, with its orchid reserve, glowworm beetles, and herd of Dexter cattle.

In 1798, poet William Wordsworth wrote “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” here, and over the centuries many artists and writers have sought inspiration in the valley’s wooded glens and from the precipices of its sublime outlooks.