Day: 055
Date: Monday, 25 July 2022
Start: Easton in Gordano
Finish: Cheddar
Daily Kilometres: 41
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 1530
Weather: Cool, overcast and showery in the morning. Breezy with some drizzle and some sun in the afternoon.
Accommodation: Hostel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Egg & cress sandwich/Muffin
Lunch: Egg salad roll/Coronation chicken roll.
Dinner: Tuna & pasta bake/Bacon carbonara pasta, apple turnover and custard.
Aches: Dave - a few niggles and tired feet. Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: The Mendip Hills provided excellent views of the surrounding countryside and towns and were an oasis of hills, moorland and forest in a closely settled area.
Lowlight: Limestone regions make for trails that are hard on the feet - rough and rocky, with sharp edges, it’s hard to walk evenly. Although the last part of the day, spent around Cheddar Gorge, was very interesting and scenic, the trail was punishing on tired feet.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
With a long day in prospect, we left our hotel at 6:00am, picking up breakfast supplies from the nearby service station on our way out. There had been a rain shower just before we left, with more on the way, and we were hoping that our route did not include any grassy fields or overgrown paths. Wrong on both counts! Before long we were wading through wet grass or easing our way through sopping nettles and brambles. There were a few woods and lanes where we got some relief but, despite Goretex, we both soon had wet shoes, socks and feet, and they stayed damp for the rest of the day.
There were more rain showers and, at times, it was quite a miserable morning as we followed the complex route our navigation app had chosen for us. It did a pretty good job of keeping us off busy roads and away from towns and villages, of which there seemed to be many, so close to Bristol, but a lot of the paths were seldom used.
Regardless, we were on a mission today, knowing we had to cover the kilometres, and didn’t take our first break, for breakfast, until after 9:30am. There were more relatively flat and not particularly interesting hours spent walking after breakfast, and we eventually reached our lunchtime goal, the village of Sandford, around 12:30pm, having walked the last five kilometres along a rail trail.
We bought some lunch from the Sandford village store and immediately began our climb into the Mendip Hills. In the woods, when the trail levelled out, we found a couple of logs to sit on and had lunch, happy with our morning’s progress, but knowing that the afternoon’s walking would be slower. The scenery, however, was much more interesting as we climbed higher into the hills along a long ridge, eventually reaching grassy moorland with wide mown paths for walking.
Around 3:00pm, we reached the broad summit of Beacon Batch, at just over 1,000 feet, the highest point in the Mendips and, after a few moments to savour the 360° views, began our descent. We were now following the guidebook route which took us to Long Wood, which turned out to be closed because of advanced dieback and the risk of trees falling without notice. After a few nanoseconds pondering the longer detour route, we carefully climbed over the barb-wire-topped locked gate and walked through. There were trees down in the quiet and eerie wood, but none fell on us.
The last part of the day saw us following the Gorge Trail, a rocky, difficult and, in places, steep path that followed the rim of Cheddar Gorge downwards towards the town of Cheddar. The views were great and it was well worth the effort it took to get there. Nearer the town, we descended the long Jacob’s Ladder staircase into Cheddar. You have to pay to go up the ladder, though the office was all closed by the time we got there, but you don’t have to pay to descend, which was fine by us.
It was around 6:00pm by the time we reached town, and we planned to buy some cookable dinner from a small store en route to the hostel, but it was so small it had nothing to offer. Plan B was to check in to the hostel and then Julie, after showering, journeyed down to a larger store and bought dinner which we ate in the hostel dining room. It was late for us, but we had had a good and satisfying day.
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