As we needed to leave the lovely 300 year old George Hotel really early this morning, the manager said she could put “a few bits” out for us for breakfast, which she wouldn’t charge us for. Suffice to say, I’m eating cheese rolls for supper as I wrote this as we had so much food. I couldn’t even get all of it in this picture.

We then walked out of St Briavels through the woods, with the most civilised discarded gloves.

The wood was gorgeous, so forgive me for boring you with one more lovely wood photo, given the overdose you had yesterday as well. 

While I’m in this wood, I’d like to point out another of the most beautiful features it has – fungi. Trust me. I’ve inherited my mum’s love of biology who had a grey tabby cat who was so pretty, she called him fungus. Today, was a visual delight:

Then we met the River Wye, the natural border between England and Wales. Gorgeous river, gorgeous paths, we had fun chasing pheasants, it was all lovely.

Then the real jewel: the ruined Tintern Abbey. I like a lot of the principles and values inherent to the church – love one another, humility etc, but I think these can be human, not just divine values. As an earthly institution, I am not a fan of the Church of England for many many reasons. So seeing beautiful gothic representations of its ancient wealth in ruins always delights me, visually and spiritually. Tintern Abbey is exceptional. 

So then all we had to do was walk through the woods and across the bridge to England in time for a late Sunday roast pub lunch. And who doesn’t like woods?

Well, if the 30cm wide paths look like this, with a sheer drop off on one side: not me. 

Bearing in mind that while I was crawling, terrified, up a couple of paths on my hands and knees asking for Mark’s help, I wasn’t putting any thought or effort into capturing the moment or topography on camera. So this was the best one we walked on.

Thankfully the nature reserve understood my situation and had some helpful advice.

One more km of this and Mark thankfully found a cheeky shortcut over a barbed wire fence to a wide, flat, grassy footpath alongside the Chepstow racecourse, where he ran his first official half marathon, and so we dashed on over.

All that remained between us and a Travelodge was one long bridge with my mobile phone firmly in my pocket; a welcome to England on a motorway tunnel (which inevitably involved a wall of graffiti) and a very, very welcome chilled pint.

The Travelodge itself is the Ryanair of the hotel industry: one pillow, no cushions, no glasses, no aircon, no ability to open the windows fully and one giant bottle of some gel in the shower. They obviously know their target market though as you can read the label without your glasses on.

Distance – including Strava tax, but minus the shortcut over the barbed wire fence 28.5km. Distance vertically? Trying too hard not to look.