The Devil’s Pulpit

Many years ago I walked along the Wye (my grandfather caught a 41 1/4 lb salmon on the river in the 1930s) with Ingaret the Navigator; more recently along Offa’s Dyke with Robert. On Wednesday these two paths intersected at Brockweir.

Brockweir was a thriving river port with a shipbuilding yard, wharf and a dozen pubs.. It puts me in mind of Market Blandings that still has twelve public houses. Now Brockweir has one PH  marked on the OS but the builders are in. We parked across the Wye in Wales and walked back over an iron bridge built in 1906 (not suitable for heavy vehicles) to replace a ferry that rowed people across to their jobs and pubs in Brockweir.

Our walk took us uphill through a camping site where the view is so good it’s almost worth sleeping in a tent.

Camp Site above the Wye, July 2019.

We cracked on through meadows and woodland seeing lots of interesting things. Bertie saw his first sheep but wasn’t quite sure what they were. The previous evening he saw his first swallows swooping low over a field. He dashed madly after them to no avail. Beagle hope springs eternal. Then we got onto Offa’s Dyke and came to the Devil’s Pulpit.

It is a rocky outcrop above the Wye looking across to Tintern Abbey, It got its name in the 18th century because of a superstition that the devil preached from here to the Cistercians to show them the error of their ways. Robert’s Fitbit thought we had climbed 72 floors by the end of our walk.

Tintern Abbey seen from the Devil’s Pulpit, July 2019.

We are staying at The Speech House. I came here in the 1970s with my mother, uncle, aunt and cousins. It is dog friendly, welcoming them to ground floor rooms and most parts of the hotel. They are forbidden from one room: the courtroom where the Verderers meet four times a year.

The Verderers in the Forest of Dean have been in existence since at least 1218 and are charged with protecting the vert and venison (that is, generally, the vegetation and habitat) of the Forest. They are the last remnant of the traditional forest administration – unlike the New Forest, their structure has been unaltered over the centuries – there are still four Verderers just as there has been for the past 800 years. The Verderers are elected by the freeholders of Gloucestershire at the Gloucester Court (an ancient procedure in its own right) and serve for life. Over the years, the deer in the Forest of Dean have fluctuated in numbers and species (they were totally absent for about 90 years from 1855) but today a herd of about 400 fallow deer inhabits the Forest. (Wikipedia)

When they are not sitting it is the restaurant and breakfast room.

Life is full of surprises, or to put it another way, one learns something every day. The hotel has a good list of inexpensive wines from around the world, so it was no surprise to find a Malbec from Argentina – but it was a white Malbec. It came chilled with a screw top, weighing in at 13.5 %. Jonathan Ray, in his Spectator wine column, would call it just the thing to slurp on a warm evening in the garden. We both enjoyed it and may have another bottle, although I have my eye on a white Rioja.