This guidebook describes Offa's Dyke Path National Trail, a 177 mile (283km) long-distance walk along the English-Welsh border between Sedbury (near Chepstow) and Prestatyn. The guidebook is split into 12 stages with suggestions for planning alternative itineraries. With OS 1:25,000 map booklet.
This is the first comprehensive book on Offa's Dyke for over 50 years. It is attractively produced with lots of colour illustrations and maps, and will be of great interest to a wide range of historians, archaeologists and general readers. The author Keith Ray is a highly experienced archaeologist, specialising in Prehistory.
Map of the 177 mile (283km) Offa's Dyke Path National Trail, between Sedbury (near Chepstow) and Prestatyn. The trail takes 2 weeks to walk, and is suitable for walkers at all levels of experience. This compact booklet of OS 1:25,000 maps shows the full route, providing all of the mapping you need, and is included with the guidebook.
Dubbed 'the mountain connoisseurs' walk', the Cambrian Way stretches 479km between the mighty castles of Cardiff in the south and Conwy on the north coast. Traversing the heartland of Wales, the challenging route crosses the Brecon Beacons, the Cambrian Mountains and Snowdonia, passing through two national parks and visiting many of the country's iconic summits, including Pen y Fan, Pumlumon, Cadair Idris and Snowdon itself. It can be walked in three weeks (or in shorter sections) and is suitable for experienced hillwalkers with sound navigational skills. The guide presents the route in 21 stages, offering comprehensive route description illustrated with OS 1:50,000 mapping and elevation profiles. Details of accommodation and facilities are provided, along with a helpful trek planner showing their distribution along the route: although the trail passes through remote areas, it is possible to stay under a roof every night - though camping is also a possibility, should you prefer. There are background notes on Wales's history and geology and local points of interest, and a glossary of Welsh place-names, useful contacts and accommodation listings can be found in the appendices. From the Black Mountains to the Rhinogau, Glyderau and Carneddau, the route takes in lofty ridges, striking peaks and picturesque lakes. There are also fascinating glimpses into the country's ancient and more recent past: Iron Age hillforts, Norman castles, a Cistercian abbey, the Chartist Cave and relics from the mining industry. Offering superlative scenery, the Cambrian Way is a celebration of some of the best mountain walking Wales has to offer and promises a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in these celebrated landscapes.
Long after Arthur lay in a rain-washed grave, long after the legends faded from memory, a new generation defended an old border. White town in the breast of the wood, this forever is its wealth: blood on the face of the grass. In a dangerous era, an enigmatic poem portrayed a war fugitive wandering her ruined kingdom; an earthen wall transformed enemies into uneasy allies; and a man with a famous name wrote an ambiguous inscription on a memorial stone. All three survived twelve centuries as fragments of a nearly forgotten world. Awen imagines the origins of the ninth-century Welsh poetry cycle Canu Heledd and restores the breath of life to a brilliant poet in a dark time.
The massive ancient linear earthwork that provides the sole commemoration of an extraordinary Anglo-Saxon king and that gives its name to one of our most popular contemporary walking trails remains an enigma. Despite over a century of study, we still do not fully understand how or when Britain's largest linear monument was built, and in recent years the views of those who have studied the Dyke have diverged even about such basic questions as its physical extent and purpose. This book offers a fresh perspective on Offa's Dyke arising from over a decade of study and of conservation practice by its two authors. It explores the specifically Mercian and English context for its creation, and identifies 'political places' along its route that may have pre-existed it. As well as reviewing past studies of the Dyke and debates about its character, the authors identify build practices not previously noted. They demonstrate the fundamental uniformity of the design of the earthwork, including in Gloucestershire, and show how it facilitated surveillance of the landscape at key locations. Offa's Dyke is explained as the most dramatic among several devices of hegemony deployed by the Mercian regime of the late eighth/early ninth century, and as the key element in an early Welsh Marches frontier paralleled in Charlemagne's contemporary European empire.
A tale of two brothers (identical twins) who stay in the farmhouse on the English-Welsh border where they were born, tilling the rough soil and sleeping in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advance of the 20th century.
This guidebook - which includes both a guide to the route and a separate OS map booklet - describes Offa's Dyke Path National Trail from south to north, following the longest linear earthwork in Britain, running 177 miles along the English-Welsh border between Sedbury (near Chepstow) and Prestatyn on the north Wales Coast. The book splits one of Britain's classic trails into 12 stages suitable for walkers of all abilities. Step-by-step route descriptions are accompanied by 1:100,000 OS map extracts. Also included with this guidebook is a booklet of 1:25,000 OS maps, which provides all the mapping needed to complete the trail in a compact form. A trek planner gives at a glance information about facilities, public transport and accommodation available along the route. The walk is astonishingly varied, taking in the lower Wye gorge, the Severn and the Dee rift valley, the pastures and woodlands of the border country, the remote moorland of the Black Mountains and the Clwydian range, and the dramatic limestone escarpments of Eglwyseg mountain. What makes it even more special is over 60 miles walking alongside the Saxon earthwork of Offa's Dyke.