View from castleText by Ann Welton and Eric Gent
Drawing by Richard Coy
Published by the Montgomery Civic Society

Map (389 kb: prints to an A4 sheet)

 OS Maps no 137 (1:50,000) and no. 909 (1: 25,000) cover this walk.
TO THE CASTLE
Lesser CelandineThe walk starts in Broad Street, the old heart of the town. Wall plaques tell the living history of the buildings. A steep and narrow path leads from an iron kissing gate in the corner of the Arthur Street Garden. It joins the main path at the top by way of a grassy bank. On the way up through the woodland there are bramble thickets to be admired. The ground cover includes dog's mercury, ground ivy, and in Spring the bright yellow lesser celandine (rather than the primroses of John Donne's poem. A variety of birds may be seen and heard, including robins and thrushes and chaffinches. Visitors who are quiet and still may detect the shy wren and the mouse-like tree creeper.
   To the left of the path as it emerges at the top is the gorse-covered mound still hiding the original outer ward. Walls of the other wards are enlivened by wallflowers, pennywort, pellitory of the wall and various ferns and lichens.
   In the grass in early summer there is bird's foot trefoil and storksbill. In late summer harebells spring up on the Castle Rock. Butterflies come out, including perhaps the brightly coloured peacock, and small birds feed on the thistle seed heads.
   Standing on a mass of volcanic rock, the Castle dominates the surrounding landscape. It was built in the 1220s as Henry III's forward base in Wales to replace the wooden castle a mile away. Below it are the town and the church, built to serve the castle and its garrison. Beyond are the park and woodland of the old Lymore Hall and the fertile farmland on both sides of Offa's Dyke, with the Welsh peak of Corndon and the hills of South Shropshire in full array.
 


THE LLANDYSSIL LANE
Pellitory of the wall A large expanse of wooded hillside can be seen from the castle. To reach it, follow the main path that leads to the castle car park. The lane is to the right. It is typical of Montgomeryshire, lined with ancient hedgerows. In Spring they are full of hazel catkins and the blossom of blackthorn and hawthorn. In June honeysuckle, rose and elderflowe, and in Autumn various fruits, the slow of the blackthorn as well as the more familiar hazel nuts, hips, haws and berries.
   Below, a display of flowers is ever changing. In Spring see primroses and violets with anemones and dog's mercury, in Summer, Jack-by-the-hedge, wood avens, herb robert, greater stitchwort, crosswort and cranesbill, and in Autumn the red berries of the bryony. Along the lane there is also hogweed, cow parsley (locally called "lacey caps"), and (in late Summer) rosebay willow herb that colonises a waste area.

FFRIDD FALDWYN
Gain the Ffridd (pronounced "freeth" with a soft "th") by a stile beside a farm gate, on the right just as the lane starts to dip, opposite another gate. A rising field is crossed directly by a ridge. This marks the early 1st century BCE entry to the Iron Age fort that was begun in the 3rd century BCE. Turning right, the path crosses a stile and a causeway between deeply ditched fortificiations, to reach the hill top.
   Dropping down again, the path skirts the woodland edge before taking the walker under an awning of large beech trees to a pasture that sweeps down to the road. When the descent allows, woodland flowers to be seen are the bluebell (May), and later, foxgloves. In season there are violets, ground ivy, stitchwort, red campion, Valenian wood sorrel and yellow pimpernel. Buzzards may be seen soaring from the Ffridd; woodpeckers may be heard. Rabbits and squirrels will scurry off. Look for beech mast and acorns, and for the insect life under the leaves.
   Before the Newtown road, the wet area will show watercress and purple flowered figwort. Safety dictates that the road be crossed at the stile, with a care for speeding cars.

RETURN
At the first junction a hedge of snowberry is passed. At the end of Gaol Road the rightturn is by path across the end of a small housing estate, on the line of the Town Wall. The gaol was of 1831-2 and 1866, and closed down soon after. School Lane squeezes between cottages and Town Ditch, and opens out to School Bank and Church Bank. In the school area see wild clematis (old man's beard); on the walls of the churchyard and bowling green (18th century) red valerian, ferns and ivy leafed toadflax.

  
 

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The printed version of this guide was supported by the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust. Web page origination: Matthew Griffiths 3/2000