Cider Circuits: 3 new bike routes in Herefordshire

20.07.2023 - 13:19 / wanderlust.co.uk

Slamming on my brakes, my bike came to a standstill in a country lane shaded by trees. A lone sheep stood in the middle of the road, bordered by 8ft high bushes. Looking left, then right, it baaed with confusion before galloping towards me and scampering up a bank.

‘Baa!’ I said back, pointing in the direction of a farmer’s gate. ‘Go that way!’

With no farmer in sight, my friend and I positioned our bikes away from the gate to clear a path for the sheep to return to the field it had escaped from, then continued on our way.

We were trying out one of Herefordshire’s three new ‘Cider Circuit’ bike routes. The 78km west circuit known as Porter’s Perfection forms a figure of eight, starting in Dorstone before heading north past the villages of Bredwardine and Eardisley and looping around apple and pear orchards. The route continues south down to Pontrilas, returning to Dorstone via Vowchurch and Peterchurch.

After telling Dan Farnworth from the glamping spot By the Wye and Aubrey Fry from Want to Canoe? in Hay on Wye about my plan, I’d seen a few raised eyebrows. ‘The hill up to Arthur’s Stone is a killer,’ warned Aubrey.

Fortunately, the route can be split in two and Drover Cycles in Hay on Wye has a fleet of 100 bikes – a third of which are electric, one of which I opted for. Co-owner Anna Heywood-Skinner provides Ordnance Survey maps; those, along with detailed directions, means cyclists needn’t rely on phone data.

There’s no bike hire in Dorstone, so I chose to start in Hay on Wye, passing fields of cows, baaing sheep and a tractor en route to Hardwicke Church, 20 minutes’ away. From there it was a 40-minute jaunt to Dorstone along lanes bordered with bee-friendly foxgloves, ryegrass and buttercups swaying in the breeze like coral caught in a current. As well as a church, the settlement is home to a village hall, a 12th century pub and a sundial on a patch of lawn little bigger than a double driveway.

With the scent of manure in the air and flies buzzing around me, I wheeled past horses grazing in pastures, fresh roadkill and a pheasant darting through a meadow, its feathers the colour of carrot cake. The ebike’s turbo setting came in handy on the climb to Arthur’s Stone, a 5,000-year-old Neolithic tomb capped by a 25-tonne stone. But despite the extra help, the approach still felt like work – especially when we misread the directions and had to repeat the hill.

With more time I would have liked to have explored the paths that coil through Moccas Hill Wood but instead we powered on for an hour to the 17th century Red Lion Hotel, a former coaching inn in Bredwardine (which rhymes with wine). With my chin shining and my forehead smeared in flies like a windscreen wiper, I stopped for lunch with my friend