No Cheating This Time

Our nearest local hill walk is Merbach Hill. Its appeared many times on this blog and has in the past 12 months been a godsend as restrictions on how far you could travel became common place. It tops out at just over 300m but you can drive pretty much to that height with a short walk along the lane from the burial chamber at Arthurs Stone, always our preferred route. This is perfect when you need a short walk but we’ve never walked up from the Wye Valley, from the bottom as it were, to make a proper half day of things. The weather recently seemed set in a pattern of bright, sunny mornings and afternoon showers so we took our opportunity to tackle such a route with a view to having breakfast somewhere up on top.

When following what are likely to be little used footpaths and rights of way from the OS Map you never know quite what your are going to find. I’d planned what I’d hoped would be a nice circuit but things didn’t start well with an overgrown stile off the road and an initial woodland path, poorly marked and covered in what looked like carelessly felled trees.

From there, things improved considerably. Paths were clear and well marked taking us around some wonderful open fields full of spring lambs.

The skies looked a little threatening but added to the atmosphere on what was a warm and sultry day. Luckily they never amounted to anything and we stayed dry.

The trees are starting put on their summer display of foliage.

The last of the steep slopes towards the top of the ridge.

Expansive views over the bucolic Herefordshire countryside.

Before long we were back on the familiar territory of Merbach Hill Common.

Last year there was a superb display of bluebells up here. This year we were told by a nice lady on the way up that the purple orchids were blooming. They were magnificent (even though my attempted photo isn’t that great). I’ve been up there again today and they were even better and more of them. Much better than this years slightly disappointing bluebell turnout.

We found a sheltered spot and settled down to cook breakfast – well I did anyway. TBF is more of a healthy fruit type breakfast person.

For me this time it was Quesadillas (fried corn tortillas packed with cheese, spring onions, chilli and chorizo).

Lounging in my lightweight backpacking chair.

More open meadows and open woodland on our way down.

We were following what was marked on my map (but not on the ground) as the “Three Rivers Ride” linking together the Lugg, Wye and Usk rivers for horse riders.

We were enjoying seeing a different side of a route and hill we’ve walked many times.

Indeed its very surprising that its taken us so long to try such a route out.

We’d parked by the church at Bredwardine and the final stretch took us through pleasant woods by the Wye and back to the church.

A great little 6 mile outing. No parking hassle, no crowds, just 15 mins drive and back home just after lunch. Perfect.