Cwmyoy's wonky church and the lovely Vale of Ewyas

Cwmyoy Church is plain, simple and pleasantly irregular, the latter the result of slight subsidence in the underlying rock. (Ordinance Survey Pathfinder Guide)

What a masterful piece of understatement that is! Cwmyoy Church might not rank beside the Leaning Tower of Caerphilly (or even that other one in Italy) but it is fabulously wonky, with scarcely a vertical wall or horizontal floor in the whole building.

"A wise man built his house upon a rock." So states the Good Book (Matthew 7.24) but the folk of Cwmyoy unwittingly built theirs on debris left behind after glaciation in the last Ice Age. Before long the tower and chancel began to subside in opposite directions, and attempts to arrest the shift with beams and buttresses only added to the building's charm.

Inside, the effect of the subsidence can be quite disorientating.

From the opposite side of the Vale of Ewyas, the source of the shifting shale is easy to see. The ancient landslip above Cwmyoy has left a little hillock, not unlike the split rock of Skirrid, with which it shares a similar legend about its formation – a consequence of the earthquake when Jesus was crucified. Must have been quite an earthquake to be felt here.

But what, I hear you ask, is Angie doing on the opposite side of the valley from the church she came to see? On a walk, of course! Back in the 1990s, whilst on holiday in the Wye Valley, I bought this book of 'local' walks. Surprisingly, it describes three in the Black Mountains, including this one around Cwmyoy, some 18 miles from the Wye Valley.  Perhaps those folk at OS aren't as hot on geography as they pretend. The book is still in print, by the way, and with a few new walks, though the price has risen from £6.95 to £9.52.

For the sake of continuity I'll begin describing the walk from Cwmyoy. Leaving the church, we skirted around the hillock and past the houses of Ty-hwnt-y-bwlch, which I think means 'house beyond the gap'. A strange sound filled the air. "That's a peacock," declared S-, who knows a lot more about our feathered friends than I do.

And there it was!  I'm sorry about the crummy photo, but it was the best I could do with my smartphone camera. Nearby, a guy was building an extension to his house and I asked him whether peacocks were a common sight in these Welsh valleys. "They are here," he replied with a grin."The folk in the next house have several."

Here is the 'next house', and what a splendid place to live: a beautiful valley, a lovely, rambling house (with faded cream walls that look so 'right') and peacocks at the back door.

It was good to linger a while, for the next part of the walk included quite a steep climb up Hatterall Hill and onto the Offa's Dyke footpath. The first time I came this way it was a boiling hot summer's day and Hatterall Hill felt very steep. On this day it wasn't too bad.

The top... and time for a rest.

The author of our OS walk book waxes lyrical about the views from the Offa's Dyke path.  To the right, the English landscape at its finest;...to the left the bare slopes of the Black Mountains. However, as S-'s photo shows, photographing the scene isn't easy as the hill has a broad, flat top. Believe me, the best way to appreciate the scene is to go there; I promise that you won't be disappointed.

About ¾ mile after joining the Offa's Dyke path, we branched to the left on Beacons Way and were soon rewarded with views of Llanthony Priory in the valley below. You may have to click on the photo to pick out the priory ruins among the other buildings.

Getting closer now...

I've visited Llanthony several times over the past few years.  Here are some photos from 2015, when the sun was shining..

From Llanthony there's a lovely footpath along the west side of the Vale of Ewyas. For a long time the ruined priory was still visible...

... then the distinctive hillock of Cwmyoy came into view above farm buildings.  After 8 miles we had come full-circle. 

Murder on the Bodmin Express

The night had been filled with arguments, shattered promises and mind-boggling intrigue. Threats had been traded freely before a sickening scream and a single gun shot echoed through the train. Now a senior MI5 officer lay dead, and by his side a woman whose allegiance might not have been to Queen and Country.

What dastardly act was this? More importantly, who on the train that night was the murderer?  Might there even have been two murderers?

Fortunately, 87 budding detectives were on hand to solve the mystery, and among them was super-sleuth Angie.

The Bodmin Steam Railway has been hosting Murder Mystery evenings since Chris Batters and his company started them in 1992 – the first to be acted out on a moving train. Since then others have followed, but Bodmin's is the best, not least because at £21 it's a lot cheaper than those on the East Somerset and Dean Forest Railways. While the others have turned the event into a sumptuous 3-course dining experience, the Bodmin Railway leaves the fine china in the cupboard, the cutlery in the drawer and serves Cornish pasties (what else?). Very tasty they are too.  We have learned to supplement the meal with our own chocolate-drenched profiteroles and generous quantities of alcohol.

When I lived in Cornwall, Bodmin was 32 miles up the A30. It's a lot further away now, but when a couple of friends invited us to return for our 7th Murder Mystery we needed little persuading.

The Mystery is always presented in three parts; the first as we travel from Bodmin to Boscarne, the second as we return and the third on the way to Bodmin Parkway, where the murder is committed. We then have the duration of the journey back to Bodmin to write down our solution to the crime.

By this time you might expect me to have become expert at unravelling these mysteries, but I'd only ever come up with the right answer twice and never won a prize bottle of wine.

As the train steamed into Bodmin Station I gave my sheet to Miss Jones, secretary to the now deceased senior government employee. Then on arrival, we all gathered on the platform to hear the solution to the crime.

Chris Batters (aka 'The Stranger') took up the microphone and announced that only four people had come up with the right answer. And when he said what it was, I realised that one of them was me.

Wow! A 50/50 chance that I'd be walking off with a bottle of plonk. First name out of the hat wasn't me... but I was still in with a chance. The second name?............  Not me either.

Oh well, next time maybe.  And yes, there surely will be a 'next time'.

The Needles

After a pleasant few days in the South Downs, during which we explored Cuckmere Haven and the Devil's Dyke, rode the Bluebell Railway (which may feature later in this blog) and met up with our great friend Lucy, we motored over to Southampton for a trip on the high seas to the Isle of Wight.  Timing our arrival for the 1pm ferry proved more tricky than expected and although the driver did his best to dawdle, and took an inordinate amount of time finding cheap petrol, we arrived at the Red Funnel terminal just before midday.

"Would you like to go on the 12-o'clock ferry?" asked the guy at the gate. Yes, we would, and thus became the last-but-one to board the Red Osprey. That's Bluebird, our little Hyundai I10, on road 4.

Note for the future: don't worry too much about ferry times; just turn up.

The last time I sailed down Southampton Water I was a kid on a school trip. I remember one of my teachers pointing out the huge Empress flying boats, laid up at Calshot. This time there was still much to keep me enthralled, as we made our way down to The Solent. This is the Esso oil refinery at Fawley.

On arrival in Cowes I asked Google Maps for a route to Brighstone and was surprised to be immediately directed onto another ferry – this one across the River Medina. It made sense, though, as we wouldn't have to brave the middle of Newport with the surge of traffic that greets every ferry arrival.  Cleaver Google!

Our little AirBnB chalet turned out to be a real gem, with a lovely sun-blessed veranda, overlooked by a Buddha......

O dear, I've just re-read the heading for this post, reminding me that I was supposed to be writing about The Needles. How easily one gets sidetracked.

Surely no short holiday on the Isle of Wight is complete without seeing the famous Needles. The OS map showed a nice cliff-top walk from Freshwater Bay, so we parked Bluebird in the only free car park that we ever saw on the IoW's south coast, and eagerly set off for a gentle climb to Tennyson Down.

Alfred Lord Tennyson's lived nearby.  He regularly walked these downs and claimed that the air was worth sixpence a pint.

My appreciation of classical poetry is almost non-existent, but I do like 'Crossing the Bar'.

Sunset and evening star,

and one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar

when I put out to sea.

There's a lot of concrete near The Needles. I wrongly presumed these unsightly remains were left over from the last war, though they did look rather modern. They turned out to be an old Rocket Testing Site. 

I have Wikipedia to thank for the information that Black Arrow was responsible for our country's one and only successful launch of a satellite into earth orbit.

This view is as close as one may get to The Needles without entering The Battery and paying the National Trust.  I used to be an NT member but transferred my allegiance to Cadw when we moved from Cornwall. Having come this far, though, neither of us were going to pass on the chance to enjoy the 'classic view' of the famous rocks.

More concrete! This, though, had clearly been built to defend The Solent in time of war. It was as exciting to explore as a medieval castle, with an underground passage leading to a big searchlight.

Back on the surface, here's the sight we came to see; The Needles in all their splendour. There used to be four of them, but one collapsed during a storm in 1764, leaving a gap that looks like a missing tooth.

They serve very good cream teas at The Battery. Note carefully, please the correct order – jam first!

From The Needles it's but a short walk to Alum Bay, with its beautiful multi-coloured cliffs.  

One huge change since our last visit in 1971 is that the place has been turned into an entertainment complex. The chairlift to the beach might have been fun, but I for one was totally turned off by the prospect of experiencing a sweet manufactury, 4D cinema, Sand Shop, fairground rides and 'A Taste of the Wight' – all shared with 5 coach-loads and many a car-load of humanity. 

We shared this view from Headon Warren with just three other people and congratulated ourselves on a wise choice.

For the record, here's a similar view from back in 1971.

That evening we returned to Freshwater for a splendid pub meal at The Vine, and on the way back to our chalet stopped to watch the sunset over Freshwater Bay.  This, above all else, is the memory I take home of the Isle of Wight.