Walk Seven - Symond’s Yat Rock and the left bank of the Wye
The image at the top of the page shows the beautiful course of the “Monmouth Bullet” between Lydbrook and Symond’s Yat.
Railway memories and a memorial
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”. (Henry V, Act 111, Scene 1)
Henry V is writ large in the annals of Courtfield Estate on the Welsh Bicknor bank of the River Wye; and in the area Prince Hal first shot a bow in anger, the names of Alan Dower Blumlein and his ten colleagues are now also writ large.
This walk actually sees us setting off from Herefordshire’s most iconic viewpoint on the opposite bank. After dropping down from Yat Rock through tree-dappled sunlight, the Wye Valley trail beckons us down and along a beautiful stretch of footpath. Not so much a setting for archery, this side of the river was the domain of the bullet - “The Monmouth Bullet” on its 13 mile 10 chain journey between Ross and Monmouth. We reach the old railway embankment by the old tunnel where it burrowed 433 yards under Yat Rock to Symond’s Yat East; at a point where the River Wye still has three miles to go to get there. The beautiful path we take follows exactly the same track as the course of the railway; further on, another tunnel opened the way to the bridge to Lydbrook station. At neighbouring Edison Swan works, Pipeline Under The Ocean (PLUTO) was partly produced to fuel the D-Day Landings. This stretch of the old line, 7 miles and 50 chains between Ross and Symond’s Yat, across two bridges, through those two tunnels and along each side of the glinting Wye must have been as nice as it gets in the heyday of railway travel.
It was from this southern side of the river on 7th June, 1942, that the stricken Halifax V9977, returning from the Severn Estuary via the Forest of Dean approached Welsh Bicknor. The pilot, Douglas John Davies Berrington, was seeking an emergency landing in the flat area on the other side of Coppet Hill by Goodrich Castle. In the event, the modified plane just managed to clear the treetops of Common Grove Hill - which we visit on our walk. As the aircraft crossed the Wye, very close to a line marked by the modern fishermens’ hut, its starboard wing became detached from the fuselage. At that point the aircraft rolled over on to its back and dropped almost vertically down into the field which is known as Tent Bank. An imposing oak tree stands sentinel just above the exact location.
Knowledge has slowly gathered that 38-year-old Alan Dower Blumlein, the great electronics engineer and inventor of stereo sound, was one of those on board. The men were testing H2S airborne radar equipment to be deployed against land targets and German U-boats. The project was conceived between EMI and the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Defford near Malvern. The team was led by radio astronomer Bernard, later Sir Bernard Lovell of Jodrell Bank fame. Lovell himself was an observer on board the plane only the previous day. The four scientists who perished - Geoffrey Spencer Hensby, Frank Blythen, Cecil Oswald Browne and Blumlein - had become Lovell’s personal friends - united in their determination to produce the instruments to defeat Hitler. Anguish at the deaths of the eleven young men and the pain inflicted on their loved ones would haunt Lovell for the rest of his life; yet somehow, the cavity magnetron crucial to the radar was retrieved from the plane crash debris and the vital system was put into production in January, 1943.
The main viewpoint at Yat Rock, famous for its raptors and the familiar view up the Wye, has become the very embodiment of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Herefordshire.
Indeed, Doreen Blumlein, Alan’s widow was moved to say in the 1980s: “If you have to die, this is a beautiful place.”