A shorter walk today but the first carrying my full pack. Yesterday I mentioned the walk was all downhill from now on, it isn’t, for some reason today’s and tomorrow's routes seem to climb a lot of hills and ignore the river completely.
So having picked up my pack I headed straight up a steep hill, I had a couple of pacemakers, Sian and granddaughter Ellen who is seven. I could not show my age by being beaten up the hill by a seven year old so had to man up and get up the hill without stopping. Fortunately after 2¾ miles they tuned back and I could slow down.
The reason for climbing the hill is to get the magnificent views of the Severn Valley which were very good, one view of Llandinam is shown at the bottom of this blog entry.
Eventually after 9¼ miles and 1000ft of climbing (and descent) I arrived in Caersws (pronounced kir sous) a town which has been here since Roman times, the Romans built two forts. The first was a “campaign fort”, a wooden structure used by the soldiers for about 40 years whilst they were subjugating the area. Once the Roman position had been consolidated they built a more solid fort with a bath house and more comfortable accommodation, this second fort was in use for a couple of hundred years.
The photo shows a suggested layout of the Roman town.
Nowadays Caersws is associated with the railway. The station is still very much in use, trains run west to Aberystwyth or east to Shrewsbury. There was a disaster in January 1868 when the Severn was in flood. It had washed away some of the railway embankment just before Caersws station, a goods train travelling towards Aberystwyth early one morning left the track and rolled down the embankment, both driver and fireman were killed.
A famous railwayman in Caersws was Ceiriog Hughes who is sometimes described as the Robert Burns of Wales. He was born in the Ceiriog Valley where we used to live which is why I took an interest in him. He wrote poetry in Welsh to keep the language alive and he won prizes at the National Eisteddfod in Llangollen, apparently his poems are still performed today.
Writing poetry in Welsh has never been a lucrative business and apparently he liked a drink which also required funding so he worked at the station between 1865 and 1887, presumably he was there when the 1868 accident happened, you would think he would have written a poem about it in English and made his fortune.
I had difficulty finding anywhere to stay in Caersws, the Red Lion Hotel is now just a pub and no other places came up in my searches so I was very annoyed to find that when I stopped in the village at the Unicorn pub for a pint that they also did B&B and keep it secret.
So I then had a half mile walk to the Maesmawr Hall Hotel which was the only place I could find. It is very nice (pictured) but it adds a mile to the walk (half mile back tomorrow).
I hope there isn’t some emergency in the night, the idea of ringing 999 and telling the operator I am in the Maesmawr Hotel in Caersws might be tricky with my Welsh pronunciation, goodness knows where an ambulance or fire engine would end up.
Tomorrow I face more hills on a 9 mile walk to Newtown.