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That feeling stayed with me through the long middle section of the walk, past Hay-on-Wye and on towards Hereford, where the river slows and widens and the hills fall back. It was the easiest walking of the trip, and in some ways the dullest, but I found that I did not mind. I had started to read my father's notebook each evening, a day at a time, and to compare his impressions with mine.

The plan was vague because the idea had been sudden. A few months earlier, clearing out my late father's house, I had found a notebook in which he described doing the same walk as a young man in 1962. He had made it in nine days. I gave myself three weeks.

Some of them had walked parts of the river themselves, and one, a retired teacher I met in Rhayader, gave me a hand-drawn map of the paths around Builth Wells that turned out to be far more reliable than mine.

It was only later, on the train home, that I opened the notebook at its final page. My father had arrived on the ninth day, sunburnt and pleased with himself. Underneath, in different ink and clearly written years later, he had added a single line: 'Should have taken longer.'

One of them, a farmer's wife near Builth Wells, went further. When I mentioned my father's notebook, she asked to see it, read his entry for the night he had stayed in the area, and then went quietly to a cupboard. She came back with an old visitors' book. There, in handwriting I recognised at once, was his name, dated 14 July 1962.

Below Monmouth, the character of the river changes again. It enters a deep wooded gorge, and the final stretch to the Severn estuary is some of the most beautiful country I have ever walked through. It is also tidal, which means that twice a day the water rises and falls by several metres, leaving the banks covered in shining grey mud.

Things improved after that. Below the town the valley opens out, the river gathers strength from its tributaries, and a proper footpath runs alongside it for much of the way. I fell into a rhythm, walking six or seven hours a day and stopping each night at a pub or a farmhouse bed and breakfast.