Offa's Dyke Day One: Chepstow to Monmouth

...or as it shall be henceforth known: Day of the Squirrel...

Distance: 19.5 miles
Ascent: 800m
Weather: hot, hot, hot
Squirrels: thousands of 'em
Feet: dusty

Didn't sleep too well last night, what with the heat, the rock hard pillows, a very vocal cat and an unidentified high pitched humming noise.

In the morning, we had a big, hearty breakfast, and overheard all the complex comings and goings and requests of the other guests, not helped by the fact the waitress may well have been Mrs Overall's elder sister.
We set off at 9am, when it was quite warm enough already thank you, and it got steadily warmer throughout the day. Thankfully much of days route was under trees, in the Forest of Dean heading up the Wye Valley. We took a detour down to Tintern Abbey and had a huge cream tea at the Abbey Mill cafe, where the waitress here was very territorial about the toilets, interrogating everyone as to whether they were patrons of the cafe or not, her conversation with Rob went thus:
Can you tell me where the toilets are please?
Are you a customer of the cafe?
Yes.
Are you sure?
Yes, you've just brought us our cakes...
Hmm.

After scoffing obscene amounts of cake and jam and cream, we visited the very impressive abbey (cheapest bottled water in the village!) and then headed back to the Offa's Dyke path, we decided to follow the slightly longer but simpler and lower path along the riverside rather than heading up over the hill to Bigsweir. This was a lovely path under the trees, lined with wild flowers, and then headed out into the sunshine for the path to Bigsweir. It was hot. I thought it might be about to cloud over a bit, but it didn't. There might have been a bit of huffing, and possibly some whinging about the heat from here on.

From Bigweir, we walked up the road a bit and stopped at a handy picnic table for lunch. Then it was into the excellently named Quickentree Wood where we started counting squirrels, and later lost count somewhere between 25 and 30... at one point there were about six of them running about between the trees.

The path followed the hillside, pretty much on the Dyke and then out on to more open fields along the edge of the woods and into Highbury Woods which whad a nice old feeling. There was a steep descent into Redbrook where we stopped at the Bell Inn for a shandy. Our day's walk not over, we had a not insignificant 250m hill to walk over, with some very woolly sheep which looked like they were overheating in the sunshine, and some bunnies.

The path comes into Monmouth town centre, where we are staying at the Punch House - which is very old and interesting, with very small doors, oak beams and a big old fireplace in the room. Everything washed, including us, we are now in the Mexican restaurant with margueritas and Sol.