Eight of us set out on an overcast day threatening rain all the time but which luckily never happened.
We parked our cars near to the Llanblethian Village Hall and began our walk going down Factory Lane and then followed the signed footpath route towards Sigingstone and over part of the original Llandow WW2 runway.
We took the road to Llanmihangel stopping for a photo on the bridge overlooking the newly excavated pond with the ancient church behind.
The path now took us in an eastward direction with very few waymarks. Crossing a field three lovely ponies followed closely behind, particularly Jenny.
The path took us into some woods where pigs were rooting about and young pheasants clucking away.
At this point the walk leader, Robbie, who had not recce’d the route beforehand (a fatal flaw), was unable to find the path marked on the map so instead led the group on a different unmarked bridle path which took us out onto the road leading down to The Herberts. A short road section followed before we turned off opposite Howe Mill Farm on the footpath to Old Beaupre Castle where we sat inside the ruins eating our picnics and reading all about the history of the place. This had been built and lived in by the Basset family in the late 1300’s, a descendant of whom had later built Llantrithyd Place which we had visited a month previously.
From here we backtracked onto the Cowbridge Road then took a well-marked footpath back to Llandough. At this point there was another slight diversion in the marked path taking us around a private property until we joined the entrance to Llandough Castle.
Two fields later and Llanblethian came into view. The path at the bottom was guarded by some boisterous bullocks so another short diversion was neccessary!
We were back at the cars by 3.30pm having walked 11kms.
One of the highlights for Robbie was finding numerous mushrooms in many of the fields.
There had been many challenging stiles en route but it was particularly pleasing to have Helen and Andrew walking with us once again and coping well with all the obstacles.
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