Buttington to Mellington Hall , Offa’s Dyke – Day 13

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We seem to be continuously heading uphill for over an hour until we reach Beacons Ring, site of an Iron Age fort, covered with trees, and an unsightly mast… It is a golden September day.

Looking back during the uphill walk, we can’t help noticing the scar on the landscape made by the large life-stock market near Welshpool and the business park at Buttington. Not the prettiest viewed from up high.

The hedgerows still carry the last of the summer blackberries, elderberry hang heavy on the trees, the slopes are ripening, and we stop to pick a bag full of field mushrooms.

A very pleasant forest walk through the Leighton estate follows, marred only by some fly tipping at one corner of the forest. The sky is reflected in Offa’s Pond, and a bit further on we meet a sprightly lady walking her dog, she would have loved to walk with us, but for her two “tin” knees.

She proceeded to fill us in on the birds, the feeders and the commercial shooting. A very enlightened conversation.

Skirting the villages of Kingswood and Forden, we feast on fallen apples, washed with some drinking water.

We soon walk across fields and regain the Dyke clearly visible as we cross the plain. The walking is easy, and we make good time across the plain, chatting as we go.

We cross the B4386 and decide against walking into Montgomery and continue over the style and cross a number of fields, with views of the town and castle in the distance.
Fields of maize, swedes and stubbles of straw…on and on we go, until we eventually reach the road and through Brompton Cross with the rusty petrol pumps, reaching the gate at Mellington Hall until eventually beyond the woods we reach the hotel.

Our only regret was that we didn’t have containers for all the foraging we could have done on the walk. We just had to be happy with our bag full of mushrooms…


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