Huntsham Bridge and Yat Rock

Description

(D/A) From The Saracens Head car park, go to the Ferry. Take the hand ferry across the River Wye. Once across, climb the steps and turn right.
Walk between cottages on your left and their riverside gardens on the right, and pass a restored limekiln on your left.

(1) Continue past further cottages to the Old Ferrie Inn, where a narrow flight of steps leads under the building to the riverbank. Turn left through the car park and pick up a path in the far right-hand corner.
Follow the path alongside the river and pass below a caravan park.

(2) Keep along the riverside to the church at Whitchurch, where the path diverts away from the river; either walk round the churchyard or enter it, passing a medieval cross, to visit the church. Turn right in the church car park to a bridge over a side-stream, then turn right to return to the riverbank.

Keep on along the river, passing some large glasshouses and an industrial plant. Beyond the works, leave the river and cross a scrubby field diagonally to the road (B4229).

(3) Turn right along the B4229, crossing the Garren Brook. Keep right at the junction with Newmills Hill. After a mercifully short stretch of road walking, a stile on the right gives access back to the riverside.

(4) Follow the river through a series of fields to Huntsham Bridge; just before the bridge, keep left of a fishing compound to the road. Turn right and cross the river.

On the other side, turn immediately left and continue with the river now on your left. Enter woodland and follow the narrow and slightly overgrown path as it twists and turns between boulders; ignore a footpath off to the right, keeping close to the river.

Pass the white-painted Huntsham Cottage.

(5) At the end of an open, brackeny area, the path leaves the river, bearing right into the trees. Initially indistinct, the path heads uphill to a waymark post then bears left, passing a ruined stone building to a series of steps.

When you reach a broad forest drive, take a few steps to the left, then continue up a staircase of reconstituted plastic board on your right. Follow the path beyond to a signpost, where you turn right (uphill, signposted to “Yat Rock 1⁄4”).

(6) After a hairpin bend left, pass a cottage, before bending right to the end of a drive. Walk out to the road. Turn left and walk up the road, until you pass under a footbridge near the top of the hill. Shortly afterwards, turn left and double-back on yourself along a boardwalk to the Yat Rock viewpoint.

(7) Having admired the view, return as far as the footbridge and cross it into a picnic area. A path opposite leads down rocky steps and past a small cave to a crossing with a wide track. Go straight over and follow a steeply descending path through the woods.

Keep left at a path junction, and again at a second, until you emerge at the end of the car park in Symonds Yat East. Turn right to return to The Saracens Head. (D/A)