Lord Hereford's Knob & a walk on the Wye Side
27th May 2017
Three weekends ago was nominally our 10th anniversary, so by way of celebration, and research, we had a weekend away in a try-before-you-buy oak-framed house just outside of Hereford. The house itself was simply stunning, and gave us many ideas of what we one day might like to build.
On Saturday morning our plan was for a 6 mile circular walk, climbing Hay Bluff and, yes, Lord Hereford's Knob. Having driven through Hay-on-Wye in pleasant enough weather, as we climbed towards the car park at the bottom of Hay Bluff, the weather closed in and by the time we arrived, there was a very cold wind, the cloud had descended and we couldn't even see 'the knob'... After deliberating for a while, despite being reasonably well equipped & clothed, the weather was sufficiently inclement to make us think it would be foolhardy to set out into drizzle and cloud on a longish walk we didn't know so - as the point of the walk was to enjoy the spectacular views from the top of Hay Bluff and 'the knob', of which on that day there would be none, regrettably, we decided to change plan and return to Hay.
After wandering around the town for a while, we set out on a circular walk along the River Wye towards Llowes - this turned out to be a lovely alternative in ideal walking conditions - bright, light wind and not too hot, and we enjoyed the flora & fauna (and a sandwich). We returned to 'our' oak house via Oakchurch farm shop, where we bought what turned out to be the finest steaks we've ever had - perhaps cooking them on the AGA had something to do with it.
On Sunday we had a meandering journey home, taking in Llangorse lake & Talybont reservoir. We then found it difficult to leave Wales, firstly because of an extremely long diversion to get back to Abergavenny and secondly, eventually arriving at Chepstow only to find the old bridge closed, we had to divert back to the M4 to go across the new bridge - had we known that we'd have dropped down to Newport in the first place...
The following weekend saw us back in Cornwall, for more 'research' - can't say any more at the moment, but we did fit in a visit to The Pandora.
Meanwhile, upon our return, spring had definitely sprung:
Not only that, Mr Tufty is still after my nuts:
So there it is, a short update about knobs & nuts...