Offa's Dyke day 10:When I Get To The Border.

It wasn't the fault of The Royal Oak hotel in Welshpool. I slept well in their big comfy bed. They popped a copy of The Guardian under my door at 7am as requested and the buffet breakfast was bounteous.

No, the problem was all mine. After breakfast I returned to bed and listened to the cars hiss by my window. I felt lethargic and demotivated, a little sad even. You're not supposed to feel like that on the first day of your holiday. Then it hit me. I was massively dehydrated. I'd taken beer the night before and had a cuppa with breakfast but no water for about 18hrs. That's not like me. I normally guzzle the stuff.

So I got my pack on and headed out. It was raining. It was pissing down. Almost immediately I took a wrong turn out of Welshpool. Through a housing estate and to a dead end.

Returning to the very busy A483, no pavements and lorries speeding by, I saw a sign saying I was 16 miles from Oswestry - and I was taking the scenic route.

Finally I picked up the path proper. Good to catch up, Offa. It followed a particularly meandering and picturesque stretch of the Severn with occasional detours along the Montgomery canal.

I saw rabbits, a speedy hare, lots of sheep as usual, and nearly as many cows. Lambs micturated in tribute as I passed them. I witnessed both bovine and ovine excrement. One cow, clearly the GG Allin of the livestock world, stood right in front of me as if to afford me a medical view of shit coming out of her arse.

There was shit everywhere - and flies feasting on it. I don't think I stood in any. The view from above was better. The sun had come out.

Cows appear to have two different approaches to intruders on their patch. Most slowly amble out of your way. Some of them stand in your path and stare you down. Make you change your path. That gives you the willies. They're big fuckers. I don't think there were any bulls but I removed my red jacket just in case. One snorted at me. I had a quick check. I've never been so relieved to see an udder.

The wildlife highlight of the day wasn't the cows or sheep. Nor even the hare. The unidentified green insect was good but, for cuteness alone, the pen, cob, and eight cygnets chilling out canalside take the plaudits. Awww.

Kissing gate followed kissing gate followed kissing gate. The Powis Arms, walkers and dogs welcome, looked enticing but it was 11:45 and it's not a 'Spoons.

I walked a few miles in the shadow of the imposing Breidden Hill. Topped by Rodney's Pillar.

Just before 2 I reached Four Crosses. A small village but the biggest place I'd seen since Welshpool - and it had a pub. The Golden Lion. Ale it said. Food it said. CLOSED it said. Bloody typical.

A sign said 4 miles to Llanymynech, a place I knew nothing of, so I took it. Back on the Montgomery canal I crossed a stunning aqueduct over a wide Severn tributary. It was awesome.

I arrived in Llanymynech about 3, mums were on the school run, and with my squelchy wet socks starting to blister my tootsies I thought it'd do for an overnight stop.

Oswestry was another 2-3 hours on foot and off route to boot. I grabbed a pint of Stonehouse brewery Station bitter (2013 National Beer competition award winner) in The Cross Keys and enquired about a room. They had one. I took it.

In the bar I chatted to a lady who'd done Offa's Dyke twice, once in each direction, with her six year old son. It made me realise how doable it is and what a wuss I can be.

Llanymynech straddles the English/Welsh border. In fact one side of the high street is in England and the other in Wales. Back when Montgomeryshire was dry, we're talking booze of course, on Sundays thirsty Welsh drinkers simply crossed the road to wet their whistles.

Lions to the east. Dragons to the west. It seemed an apt spot to hole up and watch the England and Wales Euro games. The tasty pint of Three Tuns pale ale in The Dolphin confirmed it.

Tomorrow it's back on the Dyke.  For now it's supporting the country I live in and the one that gave me my name. C'mon England. C'mon Wales.

Walking backwards to Florence

The V&A's Botticelli Reimagined exhibition begins with brief excerpts from Terence Young's 1962 Dr No and Terry Gilliam's 1980 Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Both films contain nods to Florentine Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli's Venus and it's a cute way to begin a backwards journey to 15th century Tuscany and the era of Botticelli himself.

The slightly self-satisfied conceit is that it's a show about what has been done to Botticelli since his death in 1510 as much as it is one about what he did in his lifetime.

Botticelli's a good artist to do this with as, unlike Raphael and Michelangelo for example, he was pretty much forgotten for 300 years before the Pre-Raphaelites began the process of reinstating him to the canon.

So we start with modern riffs on his style. A rather boring Bill Viola installation inspired by his Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, a Jeff Koons album cover for Lady Gaga's Artpop, and a Dolce & Gabbana trouser suit utilising the Birth of Venus.

There are car wheels, coins, Rineke Dijkstra beach photos, and Tomoko Nagao's parody with its pointed digs at consumer culture.

David Lachapelle's Rebirth of Venus isn't shy about repositioning Venus's shell for maximum erotic mileage and even Warhol adapted Botticelli to his own ends. His legacy was nothing if not versatile.

If Lachapelle doesn't do it for you see how you feel about Joel Peter-Witkin's God of Earth & Heaven, Los Angeles. Yes, that's a dick.

Yin Xin made Venus Asian. Cindy Sherman donned false nose and lactating breasts. Alain Jacquet incorporated the Shell logo and Robert Rauschenberg's tribute was more figurative than we'd expect from the artist.

Bob Dylan's Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands plays as you take in ORLAN's striptease, Edward Baird's seaside surrealism, Wadsworthian, Venus, and Magritte's Ready Made Bouquet.

Magritte, with tongue possibly firmly planted in cheek, said he preferred the postcard to the actual painting. Dali gave Venus a fish head. Of course he did.

The soundtrack to the rooms devoted the Pre-Raphaelite rediscovery comes courtesy of Debussy whose Printemps was inspired by Botticelli's Primavera.

Alongside the many copies and book illustrations by the likes of Aubrey Beardsley, Gustave Moreau, John Ruskin, Ingres, and Degas we can see film of Isadora Duncan dancing. Inspired, she claimed, by days (days!) spent in the Uffizi staring at Primavera.

The paintings include Walter Crane's gauzy Renaissance of Venus (1877), Dante Gabriel Rossetti's earnest Day Dream (1880), Ingres' classicist La Source (1820-1856 - it took him 36 years?), and Edward Burne-Jones' watery Luna (1872-1875).

A William Morris tapestry and an Ettore Ximenes sculpture usher you to the final third of the show. Renaissance Florence itself. One for the purists.

Botticelli was the son of a modest tanner. Many of his commissions were for the 'powerful' Medici family. After the Dominican friar Savonarola (imagine a Tuscan Da'esh, slightly less obsessed with death) and his rampant religious revivalism gained ascendancy in Florence Botticelli revised his style. Coward. This possibly contributed to the loss of his reputation.

Few works are definitively attributed to him but there's some in the V&A. Portrait of  Lady known as Smeralda Bandinelli (1470-1475) was owned by megafan Rossetti. Burne-Jones had The Annunciation with Raphael & Tobias. Prince Johann II of Liechtenstein gave The Virgin and Child with Two Angels (circa 1490) to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna for study purposes. Good lad. The tondo (Italian translation:round) form is always satisfying. Let's hope the Viennese students appreciated it.

The only signed and dated work is 1500's Mystic Nativity. It dates from the Savonarola era and includes cryptic references probably alluding to the religious upheavals of the time and the expulsion of the Medici from Florence.

If you can read Latin you can read Vasari's thoughts on Botticelli. If you can understand Italian you can listen to Dante's Divine Comedy. I can do neither so best to exit with his mythological masterpiece Pallas and the Centaur and, after all those fake Venuses, the real thing. The Botticelli Venus. She's got it. Yeah, baby, she's got it.