ROTAVENTURE! Offa’s Dyke Project 2nd Phase - Saturday 6th August

Confidence was high and there was a general conviction that, the tortuous experience of the 2^nd day of the last outing, would not be repeated. This assumption lasted for the first 50 yards, by which time John Davies started to flag a little. I was however encouraged by my fellow walkers, who made some rather disparaging remarks about my walking capabilities and indeed some further unrepeatable and in my view, unnecessary, possibly slanderous remarks concerning parenthood. However Alison's threat that she would not wait for me and would share out my lunch that she had been persuaded to carry, was the motivating factor in ensuring I kept up.

The going was initially quite steep from Clwyd Gate, but the climb was worth it as views over Ruthin and back towards the North Wales coast were quite magnificent even though the weather was not particularly good. The original walkers were on this occasion, joined by new recruits Ann and Meryl, who had been persuaded to come by John Ward's quite outrageous lies about how we had all enjoyed last time.

It was not long before the now, not usual first trauma surfaced, as the landlady at our Llandegla, half way point, phoned to say that firstly, she had fallen and broken her hip in 10 places (and I'm 81 you know!). This on further enquiry was some weeks before; but now her husband had been rushed into hospital with very serious blood poisoning and the position did not look good. We immediately told her we would make alternative arrangements, but this sent her into more of a panic because she said she needed the money! We said we would of course, in that case honour our booking, but we now approached our proposed hostelry with a certain amount of trepidation.

To complicate matters, despite my holding everyone up slightly, we made much better progress than we thought and we arrived at Llandegla just after midday. We decided to push on to Llangollen and then drive back to overnight at Llandegla, which was obviously slightly unusual but true to form. The Llandegla to Llangollen stretch was beautiful as the skies cleared and we could see the Horseshoe Pass in the distance to our right and the ancient ruined remains of Dinas Bran castle and World's End up ahead on top of some craggy but green, forested hills

The delightful Mrs Rogers ( 81 you know!) was there to greet us on our return and it seemed that thankfully, the position regarding her husband was not as bad as she thought, but she had undoubtedly injured herself-----horse riding as it transpired. We debated that perhaps the horse had also been in the same age range. Hand House was an amazing blend of images (think Upstairs Downstairs meets Alice in Wonderland) and we enjoyed our stay despite the healthy breakfast (ie no full English!).

The following day saw us returning to Llangollen having said goodbye to Meryl and Ann, but hello to Jenny and Hilary, 2 further recruits from Mr Ward, who once again had been persuaded to join us. I think at this rate John should take his coercion skills to the Middle East! He's wasted on us.

Sunday's walk again had lovely views as we initially trekked high above Llangollen before descending through the woods and fields, eventually arriving at Chirk Castle. Here we had a well deserved lunch, again in sunshine before returning home to plan the next "leg".