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By Root 332 0

but which turned out to be vile and left me burping acidically all afternoon. I wouldn’t dream of saying that that was the spirit of the place, although there is a culverted stream under the town called the Shitebrook, so maybe it’s not quite as Jane Austen as it first looks. Climbing up to the castle, a regular favourite, I spotted a sign for the Montgomeryshire war memorial, which I’d never visited before. It seemed like an appropriate stop on a pilgrimage across the county, so I followed the path high up on to the top of Town Hill, just over a thousand feet above sea level. The monument was soberly impressive, but the view thrilled me viscerally: not only was it an endless panorama of borderland loveliness, but it was the first time I’d seen from the same spot both the Clee Hills in Shropshire, behind which I’d grown up, and Cadair Idris, above the village I now lived in. My whole life in one view: I hadn’t realised it was even possible.

Though I say so myself, my invented Welsh Coast to Coast (though I’ll settle for the Montgomeryshire Way or, if that’s already taken, the Parker Trail) was stunning, and gave me everything that the English one hadn’t. I had numerous easy chats, and some great laughs, with people en route: farmers in the fields, old ladies hanging out their washing, workmen on the roads, a shopkeeper or two, landladies and regulars in a few pubs, mothers pushing prams, the mobile librarian, an old boy nailing up the parish notices on a chapel board. Staying with complete strangers in B&Bs quite near home is a novel experience too, giving you unexpected new angles on places you thought were so familiar, and both were great fun as well.

The variety of paths was similarly intoxicating. The most exciting were the sinuous green lanes, winding almost subversively under their leafy canopies around the edges of fields and woods. There were little worn ways grooved into fields, not much more than sheep tracks, a canal towpath and walks along river meadows, glorious strides through the whole landscaped length of the Gregynog estate, sweet little paths that tiptoed through bluebell woods, farm drives, rickety bridges, and zig-zags up and down the many hills. Quite a few country lanes filled in the gaps, and they were some of the best bits of all: high hedgerows bursting with colourful life and sudden views over gates. Not once did I wish I was on a rocky fell.

In one tiny village, there was a nasty blast from the past when I saw a sign hanging on the side of a stile, its lettering faded, but the words still able to burn into my heart:

FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE

Public Rights of Way are CLOSED in Powys.

Maximum Fine for use £5000.

How quickly, and how sickly, it all came back. The 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth had been my baptism of fire to rural life. I’d moved to Wales the previous summer, and had then experienced the wettest, greyest autumn on record (in our local weather station, rain was recorded on every single consecutive day for over three months), followed by a cloudy, damp winter. Just as March – and hope – approached, animals started blistering and footpaths were snapped shut all over the country, even in places miles from any outbreak. Real worry, paranoia and isolation hung over the countryside like a poisonous miasma.

The speed with which these signs had gone up had staggered me at the time – horrified me, if I’m honest. Within just a couple of days, they had turned up on every obscure, forgotten path and bridleway. It was impossible not to compare such brutal efficiency in getting the things closed with the eternally lackadaisical approach to getting blocked ones open. And no path was left unshut. The only place for miles around that I was able to walk the dog was the nearby four-mile beach from Borth to the Dyfi estuary, though there were angry demands in the local paper to close even that, but it was considered logisitically impossible. The boardwalk paths through the dunes were soon taped off, however, as were numerous urban tarmac paths in towns, floodlit cuts behind shops and through housing