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Getting away from it all ....
I slept well and woke at about half past eight. A quick look out of my window over the floating harbour revealed a sky of light grey cloud. I shaved, packed my gear back into the rucksack, folded the tent away and spent some time mummifying my feet with the roll of tape I had bought the night before. The hostel lobby had a selection of postcards and I bought a few before stepping out onto a street busy with people heading to work or considering early shopping. The supermarket I had visited the night before ran a post office counter, so I stopped and posted two of my used maps home.
I sat for a few minutes near the Marina fountains, using my iPhone to establish where I was and how to get back onto my path south. I had already decided to aim for Chew Magna and see how far past it I could get by day's end — I was getting behind schedule and there was no point pretending otherwise. I constructed an on-the-spot route through Bedminster and set out at just after ten.
The sunny streets felt good underfoot. Main roads were clear enough on my OS map. It was the side streets that complicated things and had me working to keep going in the right direction. I lost myself twice through poor map reading and a map scale badly suited to urban navigation. The second error had me heading east for twenty minutes before I admitted it to myself and turned back, passing the same group of malingering workmen on a dug-up stretch of road who had watched me go by in the opposite direction not long before.
I also went into a hardware store on the main street looking for gaffer tape, which I felt would serve my blistered feet better than the cheap alternative I was currently wrapped in. It seemed to me a poor show that a hardware store had run out of gaffer tape — surely a product to keep well stocked.
Back out onto the street.
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The Avon in Bristol |
I was soon among the streets of Headley Park, then through Bishopsworth and into a less savoury part of Bristol. I had worked in Hartcliffe a few years previously — an estate I was now approaching — and was familiar with the area and its fair share of urban crime. I used my coat to cover the camcorder, having decided not to brandish it around in time to film my own mugging. There were plenty of people about, including school pupils turned out for lunch, and although my hiking gear and large rucksack drew curious stares, I was mostly a five-second diversion. One exception: as I passed vehicles stopped at traffic lights in Bishopsworth, a young guy in a car did a double-take when he noticed my gear. Loud music was pumping. I was peripherally aware of him ducking down to see me properly from under his car roof. I carried on walking but turned my face toward him. He stuck his thumb up in greeting. I nodded once and turned away, happy to leave him behind.
The rain arrived suddenly and heavily, requiring a stop to put waterproofs on. This became pointless within two minutes when it stopped and the sun began to beat down, overheating me and requiring a change back. Once into Hartcliffe I had further trouble finding the street I wanted — the one that would take me past an academy building and onto a track through the back of the estate. I passed the same hot dog van three times in my search, my stomach growing at me to stop, though I wanted to hold out until I was clear of Bristol and up on Dundry Hill.
After a frustrating period of lost wandering, I spotted a tiny path sneaking along the side of a car repair garage and onto higher ground. I took it. The path went steeply upward past the bottoms of gardens and through terraced houses, leaving me breathless and willing the ground to level out. It did, and I was taken onto a tarmac path leading to another estate on higher ground — a continuation, it seemed, of the one I had walked through below.
Low ebb at The Pelican ...
The sun became so fierce that I sat under a hawthorn bush and applied factor thirty. Dark clouds swept over within minutes and it began to pour again. I had trouble identifying the beginning of my route up Dundry Hill, as it looked more significant on the map than it turned out to be in reality — a meek single-file line over a paddock. I was immediately fond of it. Without preamble, it carried me away from concrete and people and buildings toward a bank of ferns and the beginning of woodland on the hill's flank.
I had had enough of walking through a city and its estates. Climbing Dundry Hill on a dirt path winding through dripping foliage, I became aware of how quiet it was and I savoured it. The path was steep and irrelevant in its twisting — going up was its only real purpose — and I used my compass to follow any track heading south when I wasn't sure of my marked route. I broke free of tree cover near the top and walked across an open paddock lined with traditional hedgerows at about 560 feet above sea level. I stopped and looked back north. Bristol spilled out around Dundry Hill, receding into the middle distance — the worn estates of the morning, the Clifton Suspension Bridge spanning the Avon gorge, and beyond all of that, two far-off towers of the Severn Bridge that I had walked beneath two days before. On the horizon, lying low and bruised against a stormy sky, were the Forest of Dean hills I had descended from at the start of the week. I was beginning to get a picture of the miles I was putting away. A stile took me into a more open field at North Hill Farm, where a cutting wind was waiting. I walked downhill through the farm and then down the south face of Dundry, helped initially by a lane that took me through the few dwellings of East Dundry before petering out into boggy ground — a wet earthen path beneath a tunnel of hawthorn and small trees. Some had fallen at forty-five degree angles, leaning against their counterparts on the opposite side of the path, requiring me to crouch and scramble underneath with my pack catching on branches. I was picking my way forward in the poor light when a branch caught under my foot and pitched me forward. It was, to my knowledge, the first time I had taken a tumble on any of my walks, and I had chosen to do so in the middle of a pool of mud, leaves and water. I landed on hands and knees, emitting the kind of sound that appears in the speech bubbles of cartoon strips. *Ooof.* I was unhurt. I picked myself up, swearing quietly while scraping mud from my hands and trousers. The map had caught a fair amount of the stuff as well — Felton and Potter's Hill would never look quite the same again. I continued more carefully and reached a rivulet crossing the path, where I made the fairly silly decision to hop from stone to fallen branch in an attempt to keep dry, my socks already at a stage where they could have been wrung out.
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Looking back to Bristol from Dundry Hill |
I asked the very obviously pregnant young barmaid if she knew of any campsites in the area. She didn't, and suggested walking on to Bishop Sutton, which she thought might have one. I had already decided this was the best option, but thanked her and took my drink to a well-lit corner table to assess my situation.
The Pelican Inn had the misfortune of housing me on two occasions when it could fairly be said that my spirit was at its lowest. In June, my walk had already effectively failed — I had arrived by bus and taxi, feet ruined — and I had sat here in the same deflated manner. Now, in September, having actually walked from Herefordshire to north-east Somerset, I found myself in exactly the same chair with exactly the same feeling. If there was a low point of this walk, this was it. I was despondent, behind schedule, my feet throbbing, the thought of them breaking down altogether nagging at me. The trouble was that they were wet essentially all of the time. I thought about home. About a hot bath. About my own bed.
In an effort to displace such pleasant thoughts, I took my boots and socks off and draped the latter surreptitiously on the pub furniture, wringing them out first, trying to dry two sets of walking socks that were both completely saturated. The dressings and tape on my feet were soaked and hanging loose and came away with a light tug, revealing a number of blisters that had not yet broken down into open sores. I sat for twenty minutes supping lemonade and applying fresh dressings and tape, watched with steady fascination by the young barmaid, who broke off her examination of my feet only to answer a phone call.
Foot maintenance done, I had a frank conversation with myself. I was still able to walk. I knew I would feel thoroughly wimpy once home if I gave in just because I was having a black moment. My feet had held up reasonably well considering the amount of concrete they had been forced across in the past day. I shuddered as I pulled one of the damp socks back on, laced my boots, and walked back out onto the main road through Chew Magna.
Hazards of a home-made route ....
It would be good to report that fresh determination now carried me efficiently forward. It might have done, if I could have found the small path on my map that was supposed to thread through a row of houses and across a weir to the fields beyond. I traipsed up and down the same alleys and avenues between houses time after time, each one ending at someone's garden fence. Half an hour wasted in a fruitless search with the day ticking away.
I gave up, consulted the map for an alternative, marched back down the high street past The Pelly and took a right onto Denny Lane. Following this south out of the village, I turned right onto fields the map told me contained public footpaths — and it was right. I could see that I needed to follow the weir I should have crossed earlier, though the ground around it had been turned to paddy field by what was shaping up to be the wettest summer in a hundred years. Wooden footbridges had been installed in some areas. In others there were none. I was immediately soaked again and couldn't, try as I might, get onto the correct side of the weir no matter how far I followed it.
More time lost, stumbling through bracken and saturated grass. In the end I had to retrace my steps almost back to Chew Magna's edge, at which point I had a small but comprehensive outburst — swearing fluently at the weir, the wet ground, the map and the watch on my wrist. I pulled out my compass, watched the red needle settle north and lined myself up on the white end pointing south. I looked up along its line: a field, electric-strip fencing, a farmhouse.
Right then. That's the direction.
I strode forward, climbed three electric fences with bold indifference, crossed a farmhouse garden and came upon a stile in a hedge. The stile put me back on Denny Lane. Back on route — a route I could have stayed on a mile and a half ago and saved myself another paddle and a session of anguish. On the other hand, I was suddenly enthused by the compass solution and made a mental note for future reference: if in doubt, point yourself south and walk.
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A Muddy Track by East Dundry |
About halfway down the east side, at a place called Hollow Brook, I tried to leave the shore path and return to the road. High, impenetrable hedges kept me from the road, which was elevated a dozen feet above me. I had to loop back north along the paths until I found a fence low enough to climb, then scrambled over and was reunited with the road into Bishop Sutton — where I was delighted to discover that a caravan and camping site sat on the village fringe.
A Bishop’s sanctuary ....
Bath Chew Valley Caravan Park was a genuine godsend, and so was the woman who runs it. I entered a modern, clean booking office and helped myself to an imperial mint from the complimentary dish on the desk. Nobody was about, but a small notice invited me to phone a mobile number. When I did, I could hear ringing coming from deeper inside the building. Presently a bustling figure arrived from what appeared to be living quarters and a lady smiled pleasantly at me. Yes, she said, I could camp for the night. Money changed hands and I asked about laundry facilities. When she discovered I didn't have much to wash, she offered to put it in her own washing machine. I was so taken by this that I introduced myself by name, and she told me she was called Diane and that I should make myself comfortable.
I threw the tent up quickly, put my phone on charge and dashed to the shower room. Hot water on a tired, wet body — one of the more reliable pleasures of this kind of undertaking. Even better, Diane had mentioned that the The Red Lion pub was only several hundred yards away, down a few lanes and onto the main street going through Bishop Sutton. Should I feel the desire, there was even an Indian restaurant at the top of the road. My evening lay set out before me. Freshly scrubbed, clutching my phone charger and blank postcards, I stepped through the garden gate and onto the road — which Diane had warned me to approach with caution at this point, as it was a blind corner. This was good advice. A car hurtled around at some speed and whooshed past my face as I stepped out.
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Chew Magna Lake |
The Red Lion was close to empty on a Monday evening — one other punter, an obligatory young barmaid who appeared to sus out fairly quickly that I had sneaked my phone charger in and kept shooting me darting, suspicious looks. These became more frequent when I recorded an Audioboo and could be heard babbling to myself from a corner of the room. After this I became circumspect and simply sat writing postcards and reading, working my way through several pints of an excellent Bath best bitter I had discovered, called Gem. I thought about the walk as I drank. I reckoned I was now approximately fifteen miles behind schedule. The reason was not hard to identify: on established routes like the West Highland Way, twenty-mile days had been manageable because the routes were well-marked and rigorously maintained. Stiles clear of thorns, paths visible, nothing swallowed by urban sprawl. I had made up my own route and was at the whim of its idiosyncrasies and whatever its surrounding environment had done to it. I had been wrong to suppose I could cover eighteen to twenty miles a day on home-drawn paths. Lesson learned. From now on, I would plan days of thirteen to fifteen miles.
Still in thought, I decided to head back to my tent. It wasn't long before I was wishing I had paid more attention to the route here.
The night was absolute. No street lighting at all, and under its blanket every lane looked identical to the last. I wandered to and fro, acutely aware of how absurd my situation was. I could not be more than a few hundred yards from my tent. It might as well have been pitched in the Outer Hebrides. I stopped in the middle of a back road and looked up at an inky sky, trying to reconstruct the turns I had taken. Two lefts? Three rights? I was beginning to eye up hedges as potential sleeping quarters when I recognised the tall, steeply-angled roof of a house. I had walked toward that from the main road, which meant I should turn around.
I turned around. The main road was there.
Five minutes later I was tucked into my sleeping bag, wondering what all the fuss had been about — though it had been a close thing. Wind was buffeting the sides of the tent and sending occasional spatters of rain across the flysheet. To these sounds, I drifted off to sleep at about half past eleven.
Daily Tweets
- Bristol was an experience my feet won't forget. I'm on top of Dundry Hill and looking at my next target, the Chew Magna lake.
- I'm safely ensconced in my tent, listening to the bluff wind haranguing at my fly sheet. Last couple of hours spent in The Red Lion pub.
- Wrote out some postcards, sneakily charged my phone and discovered a new bitter I like from Bath, called Gem.
- Feet are bearing up, given that they are constantly wet and gave been in contact with a lot of concrete over the past two days.
- Tonight, Bishop Sutton and tomorrow the Mendip Hills and me sobbing as I tackle gradients all day. I'm way behind schedule - 15 miles or so.
- At this rate, I'll be turning up at work next Saturday still wearing my reeking walking gear and knocking residents over with my rucksack.
For a full profile of the route (PDF format) click here
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