Day 18. Chepstow August 24 2001

For some reason today was very difficult, my legs seemed like leaden weights and it felt like some malicious entity has stuffed chunks of masonry into my panniers while I slept.

We woke in St. Briavel Castle after hardly sleeping at all. It truly felt as thought I had slept in prison, fellow prisoners snores and all. It did not, I’m afraid, help my mood that the toilets only worked sporadically.

When finally Heather and I were able to move enough to push our bikes, she having slept as well as I, we plunged down once more into the Wye Vally. It had rained in the early hours of the morning and the valley floor was shrouded by a thick mist.

Our first stop today was at the ruin of Tintern abbey, a Cistercian stronghold that had been abandoned after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.

The abbey was a ghostly skeleton on the valley floor, great arches gaping blankly at the sky, grass growing wild in the halls of its monumental structure.

It was like touring the remains of some ancient antediluvian beast that had been washed ashore and gnawed at by the birds for eons uncounted.


When we sat in its tumbled stones I could almost hear the forgotten generations of the faithful as they walked the ruins. It was a humbling experience.

Heather was enchanted with the abbeys ruins and strove to capture its elusive essence with pencil and paper. Her frustration with her lack of ability is, to put it mildly, unfounded.

From the abbey we had a harrowing ride to Chepstow, my muscles strangely falling apart. When finally we crested a hill and saw blue water before us I wanted to shout in exultation “The Sea, The Sea” but it is only the tidal mouth of the Severn River and unlike Xenophon and his ten thousand it does not spell escape for us but an upward climb we are scarce able to handle.

We found our campsite with the gratitude only the truly exhausted can feel only to find that it is the beginning of a holiday weekend and the Brits have swarmed out of their cities in droves. We were stuffed in today but the rest of the weekend will be a challenge. It is selfish I know, but I sometimes wish we were the only tourists. Imagine Tintern alone!

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