The Big Muddy

Yesterday my wife and I embarked on a walk in the Vale of Glamorgan, the attractive rolling countryside to the west of Cardiff. Called the "Three Saints Walk" it featured three ancient churches dedicated to St Bride (Bridget), St Peter and St George. However by the third church we were so beside ourselves with exhaustion and drenching we barely paid it any attention at all.


Uploaded from the internet, the walk was measured at nine miles, but after various detours made necessary due to poor route description and also, I believe, alteration by local farmers who had either moved or removed altogether a number of stiles, it turned out to be more than eleven miles.


 As for the conditions, well, to be fair, the description did warn that some sections were liable to be muddy and "sometimes flooded"; this description was certainly apt in the event. Bogs, mud slides, paths which in the event were swollen streams and some areas that could only be described as full-on quagmire were the order of the day, which at least remained rainless. As it turned out we couldn't have got much wetter if there had been a cloudburst. At one point my wife recklessly attempted to ford a small river that wasn't even mentioned on the map and found herself thigh-deep in fast flowing water. "Give me a hand you idiot" she yelled while stranded half way across, while I simply looked on in a kind of paralysed horror. For a moment relations became a little strained.


These were repaired before long though. There's nothing like facing adversity together to enhance the bonding process...  And when we reached the occasional parts of the route that were on paved roads it was like walking the streets of Paradise.


I pronounce this one of our most difficult walks to date, and certainly the wettest and muddiest. Were we ever glad to get home at last and get under a hot shower and warm our hands around a cup of well deserved tomato soup! Yet this morning I do not find myself overly stiff, which says something about my general fitness level. Must be all the recycling...