Glyndwr's Way with Ursula Martin

Ramblings

BBC

Science, Nature, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2016

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

Clare Balding gets serious in this new series of Ramblings as she discovers what it takes to be a more adventurous walker. Today she joins Ursula Martin who walked over three thousand, seven hundred miles, around Wales in an eighteen month period. After being treated for ovarian cancer she decided to walk to her medical appointments from her home in mid-Wales to the hospital in Bristol. Ursula then just carried on walking, raising money for research into the condition and spreading the word about diagnosis. Today she takes Clare on small section of her favourite walk, along Glyndwr's Way in Powys, Mid Wales, starting just outside Llangadfan, they walk for about eight miles to Llanbrynmawr, just west of Welshpool , a few miles south of Snowdonia National park. The route takes them through farmland, onto open moorland and into a pine forest, where the moss covered trees allow their imaginations to run wild. Ursula spent many nights rough sleeping but she also describes the incredible kindness and generosity she received from total strangers who offered her meals, accommodation and the greatest gift of all; transporting her backpack to her next destination. She explains to Clare the joy and pain she found in walking day after day across the country she has adopted as her own. Producer: Lucy Lunt.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a BBC Radio 4 download. You're listening to me, Claire Balding, with another edition of Ramblings.
0:09.7	I've come to the middle of nowhere. I really do mean the middle of nowhere. It feels like a different planet.
0:15.3	I'm in the middle of Wales and Powys. Joining Ursula Martin, who has taken on an epic adventure,
0:21.4	because this series of ramblings is all about big challenges,
0:24.7	not just going out for an afternoon stroll or a six or seven mile walk.
0:28.2	It's about taking on really big, long, day after day, serious walks.
0:34.8	And if I say you have walked Wales, I'm not exaggerating, am I? No. Yeah, I've walked
0:40.2	all of it. The outside and the middle and the mountains and the rivers. Yeah, 3,700 miles.
0:46.8	3,700 miles? Over what period of time? From start to finish, it was 17 months. And I probably
0:54.0	walked 13 to 14 months of that.
0:57.6	So this afternoon you brought me to one of your favourite sections of Glinda's Way.
1:02.5	And what a beautiful time of year to be here.
1:05.1	We've got a warm, bright day, some cloud, but lovely big blue pockets of sky and lambs that are so fresh,
1:15.1	they looked like they just popped out last night. So where are we walking today and how far?
1:20.1	We're walking from just outside Langadvan south towards L'ambemey. I really enjoyed this
1:27.1	section because it was such a mix of landscape
1:29.2	so it just went from this farmland here through a patch of forestry and then through some quite
1:34.1	high hills with a steep drop down to Llambramai and I just remember it being this really
1:39.0	stunning day so I thought that this would be a good place and to come back and revisit.
1:44.3	We're pretty much if you look at the map of Wales,
1:47.3	we're pretty much in the middle, to be honest.
1:49.2	We're not as far over as Snowdonia.
	...

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