It feels like every time I attempt to write about anything that's happened in 2020 the first words are "Plan A couldn't happen because of the pandemic, so here's Plan B".

On this occasion, Plan A would have been another #GetOutsideDay activity challenge weekend with Zoe and Sarah. (See 2018, we also did 2019 but I suck at blogging so no write up of that one (yet?))

Plan B turned out to be a rather rainy walk in the Wye Valley, along the Angidy River in Tintern.

The Angidy Trail is a circular footpath exploring the hidden industry of the valley, which was used for making wire. The information claims that the walk is 5 miles, but when I plotted it out in OS maps it came up much shorter!

The trail starts from the Lower Wireworks car park (free), where there are some information boards about the history of wiremaking.  The trail isn't specifically waymarked, and I'm not sure where the "5 Miles" claim comes from because it's definitely shorter - I'd plotted a route which included the trail and some extra hill and the whole lot came out at 7km (4.3 miles)

We took a wrong turning almost straight away - walking up the road rather than forking slightly left.  With the help of a friendly local we eventually found the correct path though. The same man appeared again a little while later as we were admiring the remains of a dam and mill pool, and we had a good chat about the river, local history, and which famous people used to live nearby.

what's left of Abbey Tintern Furnace

I'm sure I've already mentioned that it was a particularly rainy day. The Angidy is only a small river, so it doesn't take much extra water to turn it into a bit of a raging torrent.  Shortly after the furnace buildings, pictured above, we had to turn back on the flooded footpath and walk up the road instead.

Once we reached the top ponds at Pont y Saison we detoured from the Angidy Trail and headed up the hill to Fairoak.  From here, it was back down through the sheltered woods until we got to Tintern.  Another detour along the Wye Valley Walk took us to the limekilns.

And of course, you can't really go for a walk in Tintern without having a quick look at the Abbey.  Mostly because it's massive and very obvious, hah.

The Wireworks bridge (frequently featured on Netflix's 'Sex Education') was our final point of interest, and very slippery.

Wireworks bridge selfie (pic by Zoe)

Soggy smiles all round! Rain aside, this was a lovely little walk. Some might argue that it would be even better on a dry day, followed by tea/cake/ice cream at the Abbey.

tags: Wales walking