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Date: 31/07/25
Old Fort Defeats Old Fart
(or, Incoherent Ramblings #3(a))
It seemed like a really spiffy idea.
Deciding to keep to the southern half of my realm, I set on visiting Oswestry. This is a town which - notwithstanding it being not very far from home - I had only visited about five times in my life before. But the bus pass is an instrument of liberation, and - because at least one end of the journey would be on this side of the border - it was now within easy reach.
So it was that I travelled into town on Wednesday morning to catch the T12 service which runs through Oswestry on its way to Machynlleth. Although Arriva has two services running to there - the 2 and the 2A (2B was not to be, it seems) - they tend to go through a number of villages of various sizes to get there, whereas the T12 (run under the 'TrawsCymru' brand by both Lloyds of Machynlleth - which runs the T3 I used on my last peregrination - and Tanat Valley Coaches of Llanrhaedr ym Mochnant) missed most of those same villages out, resulting in a quicker service.
We set off out of Wrexham past the hospital and then onto the A483, by-passing Bersham, Rhostyllen, Johnstown, Ruabon and Cefn Mawr, only leaving that main road once we had got nearly to Chirk.
(As an aside, I hadn't realised how big a place Chirk is; it seemed to go on forever - which may be how some of its residents perceive it as well).
Here we diverged from the main roads to head eastwards to the village of St. Martins - where we had to do a turnaround due to a road closure - and then down to Gobowen and on past its noted orthopaedic hospital before finally reaching Oswestry bus station.
I had the plan of action for the day sorted out in my head, and the first part involved visiting the Iron Age fort known as 'Old Oswestry'. This couldn't be said to 'loom' over the town as it is a bit too far out to do that, but it's still a three-quarter-mile walk from town.
Coming out of the bus station and turning right onto Beatrice Street, I soon found myself at the bottom of Llwyn Road, which would lead me to the mighty earthwork.
And so, I started up the road. I had checked the map, which had suggested that most of the road was on no more than a gentle gradient. Up the road I went...and up the road I went...and UP the bloody road I went. I plodded on with deliberate slowness up past houses in a variety of styles from a number of different periods from about the 1890s to more or less the present. They all seemed to be well kept, and the variety of styles kept the views from the road from becoming monotonous.
I reached a side road called 'Varley Rise' ("Varley to bed, Varley to rise / Makes a man dead if he's not very wise") and then saw the fort above me. Quite a way above me, too. But I had come this far and - in a rambler's version of the Sunk Cost Fallacy - I wasn't going to turn back now.
I finally reached the gate which gave access to the site and started to...you've guessed it...go up the path, which was steeper than the road had been. What also did not help was the nature of the footpath itself. Some clown at English Heritage or the local council had though that it would be very 'authentic' to make the paths out of quite large, irregular stones rather than something more solid. As someone who hates walking along those studded pavements which are put there as a sort of podalic Braille supposedly to aid the visually impaired, because I can feel every bump and corrugation of them, I found my only sane course of action was to abandon the path altogther and walk on the adjoining grass.
The authorities had been kind enough to put the odd seat beside the path, and I duly took essential respite on them; I was getting very weary by this point.
I finally reached the top, and noted that the path onwards around the edifice stretched into invisibility beyond the area of grass which was being grazed by a quite substantial flock of black sheep. I quailed at the thought of continuing (I may even have partridged), and sat down on the grass to consider my position.
I had allowed about an hour and three quarters to reach the top, navigate around it and then head back down into town again. It had taken me something like an hour just to get to this point, and I felt in no condition to force it any further. It was a disappointment, but there was no point in my being bloody daft about it.
And so, after a period of introspection in which I contemplated my fragility, I picked myself up and started to head back the way I had come. Mercifully, most of this was downhill, but people who don't walk very much tend to think that walking downhill is easier than uphill; this is an incorrect assumption, as one has to keep the brakes on for much of the time, with much strain on the knees as a consequence.
My entire self was on my knees by the time I reached to bottom of Llwyn Road, and I sat down on someone's garden wall and decided that that was where lunch would be taken. While I was injecting my insulin, a young woman walked past and gave me a look of utter disdain. All I can say is, "Poo to you, sweetie!".
By now, it was getting on for one o'clock and the sun had come out. I had left my baseball cap at home because it was very grey out when I left home, and the forecasts gave no indication of substantial amounts of direct sunshine for the whole day. I started to get hot, which - on top of the aching neck and shoulders I had acquired - didn't improve my mood any, and further exacerbated a tendency towards short-temperedness which I seem to have developed of late.
I had set out with other targets in Oswestry; two museums, the ruins of the castle, the market and the memorial statue to Wilfred Owen (which looked from the photographs to be a far more worthy commemoration than the modernist abomination of a monument I had seen by Shrewsbury Abbey a few weeks ago).
I now had to accept that I was in no fit state to visit any of these locations. I did stir myself enough to shuffle to the nearest of these (the Cambrian Railway Museum) but, standing there outside of it, I had to give in to the inevitability of common sense (not to say self-preservation). I trudged back to the nearby bus station, caught the 1345 T12 and headed home, as worn down in mind and mood as I was in body.
I shall try again sometime soon. There's too much to be seen in Oswestry to write the place off so casually. Next time, however, the fort can forget it.
