31 March 2013: 37km. Started 08:55. Arrived 18:00.
The change to British Summer Time meant that leaving at 08:55 was equivalent in terms of daylight to 07:55 the previous day. The other occupants of my small dormitory were still asleep when I went for breakfast.
I climbed rapidly to the top of The Mendips at Beacon Batch, pleased to have a hill to climb after the flat monotony of the Somerset Levels the previous day. Much of my walk was on the “Limestone Link” path. There were excellent views of both the Blagdon and Chew Valley Lakes. Two runners on Beacon Batch were completing a ten mile circular run from Blagdon village. Numerous people were out walking with or without dogs on this fine, dry and relatively warm Easter Sunday. I stopped to chat to a Scout leader who was checking on some Scouts spending 3.5 days walking a 43-mile route. Coincidentally he had completed LEJoG both ways a year previously on a 50cc motorbike – five days and sixteen hours per day with no motorways.
I descended to the north side of The Mendips and found the paths much more difficult to follow / on the map but not on the ground. It was almost 16:00 when I walked round two enormous ploughed fields and emerged by crawling under a hedge. A quick evaluation of my location and destination on the map showed that my best route involved a mix of roads and paths including three quarters of a mile along an “A” road. The latter was awful apart from a short stretch where there was an off road cycle path.
The final path into Keynsham was a stone track. Despite living the first eighteen years of my life in Keynsham and returning there regularly in student days, this was a track I had never walked along before. It was actually so stony that I don’t really ever want to walk along it again! By some quirk of fate, I arrived at almost precisely my promised time of 18:00 for a free night staying with my mother. I did share some Easter Eggs which I had carried safely from Bridgwater – mini eggs which were probably all that could have survived for two days intact in my rucksack.
Where's Kathryn? 