3 hours, including time at the Mappa Mundi exhibition and in Hereford's magnificent Norman cathedral.

This pleasant drive is not the most direct route to Hereford, but it passes through a wonderful landscape and within 50 metres of the literary labyrinth in Monmouth. It takes you Mappa Mundi, one of the oldest world-maps, which has the earliest surviving Mediaeval Christian maze in Britain drawn on it (another at Cambridge University is older, but wrongly drawn and not accessible to the public).

On leaving our car park turn right, going straight across the roundabout to join the A40 trunk road in the direction of Monmouth. As you pass under the first bridge you will see a hill to your front, where Uther Pendragon (King Arthur's father) besieged Vortigern and burnt him in his tower to punish him for admitting Saxons to the British Isles and so starting a war which led to the British being driven into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland.

After passing under a second bridge look left to see a stunning view of the River Wye, and on its left a beautiful house called Wyastone Leys, a recording studio and the home of the concert-hall of the Nimbus Foundation, and of the first compact-disc factory in Europe! At the bottom of the hill turn right at the roundabout towards Monmouth town centre.

At the traffic lights St Mary's Church is opposite and to your left just behind the Post Office Depot, where you can visit a literary labyrinth - but our route goes right towards Hereford on the A466.

This road takes you through the lovely rolling countryside of the ancient and tiny kingdom of Erging ("People of the Hedgehog", later corrupted to Archenfield): Bishops in Hereford were entitled "Bishop of Hereford and Erging". The land to your left was once so inaccessible that it was a refuge for Templars and Catholics during periods of persecution - the trick was to own a farm with a house on each side of the Diocesan border, so that if you were wanted by one Bishop, you moved into the Diocese of another until the hunt was called off (making a suitable donation, of course). It is said that King Harold was not killed at the Battle of Hastings, but hid from the Normans in this area, where he owned land.

Continue on into Hereford, following the signs to Hereford Cathedral and the Mappa Mundi Library , which is where you will find the maze.

The Mappa Mundi is newly housed in its own building thanks to an inspired act of a fellow Pilgrim, Peter Davey - he threatened to "sell it to the Americans" to pay for restoration work on the cathedral. This brilliant idea motivated people to raise the money, keep the ancient map, and sack him. There's no justice in this world...

Mappa Mundi represents the spiritual world-view of a 12th century monk who thought that the world had Jerusalem at its centre: North is at the left of the map and Britain is at the edge of the world. The map is more accurate than it first appears, even though it was probably drawn from a verbal description of a world which was thought to be smaller than we now know: Radio operators today measure great-circle distances and bearings from equidistant azimuthal projections which are similarly distorted. Few people were literate in the middle ages, so landmarks helped them recognise places: one of these is the labyrinth used to identify the island of Crete, about a third of the way down from the centre. Heaven is depicted above the map, and the crusaders' pilgrimage to Jerusalem was a certain path to heaven.

The labyrinth is captioned in Latin "The Labyrinth: it is the house of Daedalus". The reference is to the architect of the maze in the Myth of Theseus, which was so popular with the ancient Greeks. An elliptical maze of identical form fills the apse of Chartres Cathedral, but although mazes are common in French churches, mazes in Britain were always outdoors. Maze dances were performed in French cathedrals at the end of the Vespers service at Easter: they involved Novice priests passing a large gilded sphere to the Canon (the head of their Chapter) and back again, as they danced in triple-time around the maze to the sound of the organ... so now you know - canon-balls existed centuries before canons were invented!

More seriously, Christians believe that Jesus died on Good Friday, but was resurrected from death on Easter Sunday; he also said "I am the way..." - so the labyrinth symbolises both the promise of resurrection and Jesus himself. It further represents his self-sacrifice, indeed the Easter Dance was performed to the tune "Praise the Paschal Victim". There is only one path around the Mediaeval Christian Maze - you have no choice in the path you can take. This is no mistake: it symbolised "the one true path to resurrection" which winds unpredictably to an inevitable end. The end was heaven so in this map, which was drawn during a crusade, the labyrinth also represents the crusaders' quest - indeed in French the labyrinth was known as "Chemin de Jerusalem" (Road of Jerusalem), and folk-tales refer to walking around such a maze being equivalent to a pilgrimage to the Holy City for a penitent. Mazes of this type were often depicted in manuscripts next to the Roman Colosseum. No maze ever existed there, but again there is no mistake: the Colosseum was a place of execution - and so a symbol of Judgement; it was also the site of martyrdom for many Christians - and so symbolised self-sacrifice. With this knowledge we can read the secret message of the labyrinth: there is one true path to resurrection of the dead and to save your soul on the Day of Judgement; You must devote your life to following Jesus, no matter where the path leads you; Martydom in the crusade is a ticket to heaven.

Leave Hereford on the road towards Ross-on-Wye, and follow it until you see Symonds Yat signposted at Harewood End. Interestingly, once you have climbed out of the vale of Hereford, all the farms to your right (in Erging) still have Welsh names, even though no-one speaks Welsh here and they are in England, but all the farms to your left have English names. Five hundred years ago the prejudice against the Welsh people was considerable: no Welshman could ever be made a Burgess in Monmouth - he could never own property, stand on the council or take part in the legal sytem, even though it was a Welsh County Borough - and the shooting of Welshmen inside the city walls of Hereford was compulsory from dusk to dawn... the lesson of the labyrinth apparently fell on deaf ears.