Hay Bluff to Pandy: 13.0 miles (20.9km) +751m -975m (31 August 2016)
On 17 May 2009 we walked this section of Offa’s Dyke but as you may have read in the original post, the weather was atrocious and for most of the day we didn’t see anything except for the feet of the person ahead. In a moment of madness I said that I would like to do this section again but only when the weather was good and we would have something to look at.
After much procrastination on my part a date was set and we drove up to Pandy to meet with seven others who also wanted to walk along the ridge. We took two cars to the car park at the bottom of Hay Bluff and set of on our walk. Other than the weather, which was forecast to be sunny after lunch, the other change from 7 years previously was the route to the top. Originally we just went straight up the steep side to the first trig point but I believe that this has been badly eroded, so the official path now takes a route up the north side of the escarpment.
The first thing we saw was a new stone making the entrance to Offa’s Dyke path which gave the distance to Pandy as 16 miles. This worried me for a while as I was sure I had calculated the distance as 13 miles.
16 miles to go?
We could see the route ahead to the top of Hay Bluff.
From the stone there is a steady walk to the top of the ridge. At first it was cloudy but by lunch time the clouds had cleared and we had good views all round. Which is why I wanted to do this walk in the first place.
It was a long walk along the ridge and after about 4 hours we started to descend over farmland and down to Pandy.
This was a good walk made all the better by the weather which, on this occasion, was kind to us.