Marcher Land Adventures 2

It's my custom, if possible, to spend a day on holiday without using the car, but to go for a long-ish walk instead. The weather was set fairest last Tuesday, so that was walk-day. I was glad I took my stick as the very first stretch required a detour off what seemed to be the path and then beating aside brambles and ferns to find the steep stone steps leading down to the A466 opposite Boundary Cottage. Apart from the rather nice little barn, the first 'sight' was St Swithun's Church, Ganarew. There's not much to Ganarew, but the service register handily left lying on a cupboard in the church showed that there were 39 souls at the last offering of the Holy Eucharist, which is not at all bad and must have made the building pretty crowded. 

From here the way took me to the northern outskirts of the Forest of Dean, a maze of footpaths and roads that presumably once were footpaths, linking cottages that cling to the side of Doward Hill, their associated cars usually kept elsewhere in whatever layby scratched from the hill their owners can find. I scrambled through several hedges and a bit of undergrowth to find the White Well at Symonds Yat; at least, I hope this was it, so nobody else ever has to bother to look. The owner of one garden I passed was getting into the folly spirit with a decorative stone wall.

The farthest point of the journey was Yat Rock, where the River Wye bends back on itself such that it almost meets, and one day, millennia hence, will. There are two hostelries on either side of the river, the Old Ferry Inn on the west bank and the Saracen's Head on the east, and there are very few crossing points: Huntsham Bridge to the north of both, and the Biblins Footbridge to their south; equidistant between the two, a hand-ferry rows you across to the Saracen's Head and back. I arrived at the ferry-quay along with an older couple, and we stood for a couple of minutes gazing across the river at patrons of the pub enjoying drinks and food, and eventually concluded that nobody was coming to row us across, so it was down to the footbridge and then back, adding about three miles to my journey at any rate. It was then my turn to sit by the river and watch people staring from the west bank wondering where the ferry was (it had been cancelled due to high water, it turned out). 

Yat Rock is a steep climb up the hill but the thirty-mile views are worth while. Everyone has said so since the Wye Valley tour got going in the 1750s. The café there is equally pleasing, and it would have been much cheaper to eat than the Saracen's Head at the bottom. 

From there I retraced my steps to the footbridge, past the towering Seven Sisters Rocks and sadly ignoring the Dropping Wells which lay in impenetrable undergrowth to the north, and then cut up an exhausting trail to King Arthur's Cave. Stone Age humans definitely spent time here, though it's unfortunate that the 'giant' skeleton found in 1700 was eventually lost at sea; the Cave is just along from a Bronze Age hillfort which was landscaped in the 1800s by Lord Blakemore to include a Hermitage, Grotto and Iron Tower, all of which are long since gone. I did find what the OS describes as a Well, but which English Heritage insists was just a mine shaft. There's a lonely Trig. pillar, sitting on the edge of the trees. 

By now I was pretty footsore, and the last few miles back past Ganarew were merely a preparation for the relief I felt to catch sight of Rose Cottage once again.