Offa’s Dyke Day 8: Rest Day in Knighton
Day 7 of this walk can be found here.
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It was nice to wake up this morning and not jump out of bed in order to dash down to breakfast, pausing only to stuff all my worldly goods into a bag. We’re lucky in that our luggage is being transported from place to place and we don’t have to carry it all, but the packing and unpacking gets a bit wearing. Lying in bed and just being able to appreciate it was lovely.
Getting to lie on my bed and read for an hour or so after breakfast was even more luxurious, although my poor battered body regretted it afterwards. I must have looked like someone rescued from a mine as I limped and lurched my hunched-over way towards the taxi. I actually felt much better after the mile and a half walk back down the hill. Don’t rest too much on rest days folks!
The reason we got out of bed at all this morning was to visit The Spaceguard Centre. It’s unlikely state-of-the-art observatory, monitoring our skies for Near Earth Objects, or meteors which are likely to crash into Earth. For £7 each (and a £6 taxi ride up a steep hill) you can enjoy a guided tour of the facility and an explanation of the likelihood of Earth being hit by something which could cause catastrophic levels of damage. This was explained with great glee by the director of the facility.
It seems that every day The Earth is hit by hundreds of objects, most of which burn up in the atmosphere, with bigger ones vaporising this side of the atmosphere, nearer to the planet, but with atomic-bomb levels of force. My take-home was that a meteor the size of the Millennium Stadium would take out the whole Newport-Cardiff-Swansea area of South Wales!
Turns out that we are getting much better at tracking these things, but as yet, only have postulated ways of getting rid of them. These are not the Hollywood ways of dealing with them which, “Turn a speeding bullet into a shotgun blast,” but instead are more like giving a gentle nudge, so they pass by The Earth.
There is a team of enthusiasts at Spaceguard building, with their own hands, a new observatory. They have taken a telescope that Cambridge University couldn’t use as the light pollution was too bad and are repurposing it to track objects in space. They are £30,000 short of their £90,000 budget; on a project Damian and I thought should have cost about £500,000. It’s well worth a look!
We visited the Offa’s Dyke Centre after lunch, where we discovered that no one really knows why it was build, but it used to have facing stone on the duke, as well as just the mound. We also discovered that, disappointingly, they had run out of T shirts.
The day finished with a trip to Bishop’s Castle for a sports massage, which was much needed. However the highlights of the trip may have been going through Clun — forever embedded in my mind due to the Robin of Sherwood episode with Richard O’Brien as the bad guy Owain of Clun. It’s a hard choice though as our Latvian taxi driver with his tales of sporting injuries, almost getting mugged in Poland and driving 42 hours straight, with only a two hour snooze at the side of the road is up there too!
Day 9 of this walk can be found here.
We are raising money for The Teenage Cancer Trust during the walk. If you would like to donate, we’d be very grateful.
Our trip was organised by Celtic Trails Walking Holidays, who I have so far been very impressed by. I have received nothing from them for this endorsement. #celtictrails #shareyoursteps
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