DISTANCE: 2.7 miles/ 4.3 kilometres

STARTING POINT:  Mathern Village, near the Miller’s Arms   

Passes through farmland and the St Pierre golf course.

Points of interest include St Pierre Church and Pill Cottage, a former Customs House. This walk can be extended by linking with the Mathern & Wyelands walk.

DIRECTIONS

• Head southwards out of the village along the road, passing under the motorway 
• Have a look at St Tewdric’s Well, then re-trace your steps for about 25 metres and turn left on a road just before the motorway tunnel. 
• Follow this for about 200 metres Turn left through a kissing gate and follow a path across three fields to a bridge 
• Cross the bridge onto the golf course. Keep to the edge of the course. 
• After about 150m metres, cross a second bridge, go through a kissing gate and turn right across a wide concrete bridge Head for the left of Pill Cottage Walk round the garden of Pill Cottage and go through a kissing gate onto a tarmac drive. 
• Follow this across the golf course to the St Pierre Hotel Bear left across the car park and turn right at a corner of the building 
• Go past the entrance to the hotel and leisure club then turn right into the St Pierre churchyard Walk through the churchyard and into a courtyard with the hotel entrance on your right.
• Turn left here and go through an archway then along the tarmac drive to a T-junction, with a car park ahead. Turn right here 
• Soon turn right at a signpost ‘1st Tee’ so that you have the golf course on your left and a small wood on your right 
• Where the tarmac path turns right, leave it turning half left and heading across the golf course towards the driving range, a large, wooden building 
• Turn right at the driving range and follow a tarmac path. 
• Where it turns left, carry straight on keeping a line of posts on your left At the wood, turn left for about 100 metres, then turn right through a gate to cross a bridge over the motorway 
• Climb over a stile and pass through three fields, climbing 4 stiles to reach a road at Mathern Mill Turn right here 
• Where the road turns sharp left, carry straight on through a gate into a field and follow the path keeping close to the hedge on your left Turn left through a gate into the Village Hall car park. 
• Go through this and turn right on the main street back to your starting point 

 

POINTS OF INTEREST 

• Mathern was originally known as Merthyr Tewdrig – or the burial place of Tewdric. It was located where the head of an inlet of the Severn, St Pierre Pill, met an important trade route between Monmouth and the east Pill Cottage used to be a customs house at the time that the inlet from the Severn was navigable 
• St Pierre Church dates from Saxon times and had Saxon and Norman features. Inside there is a stone coffin lid from the grave of the first Norman lord, Urien, who died in 1295