Prestatyn Sea Front

Offa’s Dyke Day 0

Rachel Thomas
4 min readJul 19, 2019

An account of walking the 177 mile long-distance trekking route between Prestatyn and Chepstow, in 12 days.

I took the train from Cardiff to Prestatyn to start my attempt at the 177 miles of the Offa’s Dyke long-distance path, which runs along the border between England and Wales. I’m hoping that walking back to Chepstow might be somewhat easier than the journey north by public transport!

I arrived at Cardiff station for my pre-booked train to find the app showing my train as cancelled. Asking at the ticket office, I was told by one member of staff that the train was still running and had just started late and from a different station. The staff member sitting next to them interrupted, to tell us it was cancelled and some debate ensued!

Eventually, twenty minutes late, there was a train, but with no seat reservations. That didn’t really matter to me as I’d copied my ticket into Apple wallet and was unable to find any details of my pre-booked seats! It was already full of the people who should have been on the previous (also cancelled) train from Cardiff to Manchester, but eventually everyone found a seat. I had to put my walking poles on the rack above my head, which provoked a major concern that I would accidentally leave them there when I left the train.

The views of the countryside on the way up were gorgeous and as the route we walk back down is not dissimilar, I’m hoping for some amazing scenery.

Follow the acorns

I got to Prestatyn and was very kindly collected by Malcolm, who runs Plas Ifan B&B where we were staying that night. It turned out that my walking partner Damian had suffered an equally fraught journey up, where he had pre-booked his ticket several months ago, with a card which had now expired and was looking at significant, but luckily fast-moving queue at the ticket office.

Malcolm’s top tip was to walk the mile each way, to the official start of the route tonight. This meant that we didn’t have to walk done and the retrace our steps tomorrow.

There’s a shiny silver donut at the beach to mark the start/end of route. The sun shines through the top at sunrise and sunset in an atmospheric way.

We had a nice meal in La Ricetta Italian, where I had my first lasagna of the trip. Afterwards, we examined the route, agonised over the weather forecast (rain in varying degrees) and packed a day bag.

Damian had discovered the slightly concerning statistic that our ascents over the next eleven days are equivalent to the height of Everest! At least we shouldn’t have altitude sickness to contend with!

Day 1 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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Our first ascent is the green hill you can see at the end of the road.

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Rachel Thomas

Vet, likes all things animal. On a grown up gap year, travelling, exploring and discovering. Loves to find & share new things. LARP & science @rachel.wildwinter