Wysis Way
Fifty-five miles across Gloucestershire from the Wye at Monmouth to the Thames near Kemble, linking two national trails
The Wysis Way runs 55 miles from Monmouth to Kemble, and its job is to join the ends of two national trails: it leaves the Offa’s Dyke Path at the River Wye and delivers walkers to the Thames Path at the river’s source near Kemble. The name is a stitch of the two waters it connects — the Wye and the Isis, the old name for the upper Thames. Most walkers take four or five days over it.
It crosses three distinct pieces of country in turn. From Monmouth it climbs to the Kymin and into the Forest of Dean, the old royal hunting forest, still thickly wooded and worked for timber. It comes out of the trees to cross the Severn Vale, over May Hill with its landmark clump of pines and down through Gloucester, then climbs the Cotswold escarpment for the last stretch through Painswick and the high wolds to Kemble. The middle is farmland and river vale; the two ends are hills.
The walking is moderate, with a handful of real climbs onto May Hill and the Cotswold edge rather than sustained ascent, and it is well waymarked throughout. Gloucester sits on the route with a mainline station, and Kemble has its own station on the line between Swindon and Gloucester, so the eastern half in particular breaks neatly into day sections by train. Monmouth, at the start, is reached by bus.
The route was devised by the Gloucestershire area of the Ramblers and stitched together from existing footpaths and green lanes. It works as a link in a longer chain — walked end to end with the trails it meets, it forms part of a continuous coast-to-source journey across southern Britain.
