Penallt Church, at the very start of the walk, clings to the steep hillside, its 13th-century tower anchoring it safely amid tumbling old gravestones in the tiny walled churchyard. Within the church, some memorials have survived the Victorian restorers, including one to a local who died at the notorious Jamaican pirate city, Port Royal, the home of Captain Morgan.
Near the lychgate, an old medieval chestnut tree marks the start of an ancient trackway down to the River Wye. In a few places there are mossy wayside stones still recognisable as packed stones where porters once rested their loads on the steep ascent from the river. At one point, a slabbed and walled pathway joins the route, its stones worn smooth over the years by the passage of countless millstones from the plateau-top quarries to the waiting boats below.
The steep tracks emerge beside the Wye at the site of the former ferry; a rusty pulley on a wooden pole is the only reminder of this old river crossing. A little downstream, another old river crossing is still very much in evidence: the old bridge once carried the Great Western Railway across the Wye on its winding route between Monmouth and Chepstow. The line was closed by Dr Beeching in 1964, but the bridge, with its unusual underslung footway, remains an invaluable local route.
The bridge had a station on either side — Penallt Halt on this end and Redbrook on the other — possibly the two stations closest to each other on the whole rail network.
The Wye here is one of Britain's premier salmon rivers, and fishing rights can cost thousands of pounds a season, with anglers' huts dotting the riverbank. Below one of them, the jetty incorporates several old millstones (others can be seen on the far bank). The stones were shipped downriver from here to Chepstow and Bristol, and from there throughout the British Empire. The Wye was once a busy waterway with shallow-draft trows built at many small local yards, engaged in busy coastal trade in the Bristol Channel.
The millstones were worked from a sandstone conglomerate rock known locally as Puddingstone. Quarries on the plateau are cut into the steep valley side; several of the valley-side quarries are in woodland beside the route of the walk. A short detour through the thick undergrowth reveals a moss-covered stone leaning against a wall and unfinished ones lying beneath tangled ivy and brushwood near the mouth of one of the workings.
Once over the lip of the plateau, the walk levels out to an easy stroll along field paths and back lanes lined with wildflowers. One of these paths passes beside a large mansion called The Argoed. A past owner was Richard Potter, chairman of the Great Western Railway, and his daughter, Beatrice Webb, was one of the founders of the Fabian Society. Another member of this group of intellectual socialists, George Bernard Shaw, was a regular house guest. Among the features of the estate is a splendid avenue of trees, including some massive redwoods.
Soon you come to Pen-twyn, where the Bush Inn offers refreshment by the village green. You continue on lanes and paths, finally entering woodland and reaching the road back to Penallt and the start.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
