Journal:
Had a long
night's sleep (10+ hours) and got ready to leave
before having breakfast at 8:30am. The girl
doing the cooking is planning a trip to Australia
and was chatting and quizzing me last night about
where to go. It would have been hard to get
more English breakfast on my plate this morning!
I wandered from the hostel
through the small Cheddar shopping street to the
Cheddar Gorge entry road where there were lots of
tourist shops and the Outdoors Store where I planned
to buy some new socks. I arrived a bit early
for their 10am opening and found a giftshop that
sold books and bought myself a new novel to read,
having finished my first, then sat in the sun
drinking a Diet Coke watching the world go by.
The store opened at 10am and after quite a bit of
consideration, I bought two pairs of inner socks and
one mid-weight outer pair, and immediately put both
inners on under my existing Thorlos. There was
no magical improvement (there are still plenty of
healing wounds), but it did feel a little less
coarse on my feet. So it was not until after
10:30am that I began hiking and that started with a
solid climb up one side of the Cheddar Gorge.
It was sunny and mild, a perfect day for hiking and
views and I enjoyed the nice conditions, as were a
number of other hikers. At the top of the
Gorge my path turned to follow the crest of The
Mendips, another tree-less low range of hills
covered in grass and heath, and enjoyed more great
views as well as some very pretty woodland paths in
the some of the valleys.
My late start meant that I
had little chance of reaching today's guide-book
target, but I also knew that between The Mendips and
the Severn Bridge, there were not any scenic "must
sees", so during my break at about 12:30pm atop the
moors, I spread my maps out in the sun and worked
out a back roads and footpaths way to get where I
needed to be in a semi-direct way. Then it was
descending to the north from The Mendips, passing
some cave entrances on the way (with warnings) and
an abseiling school. The rest of the
afternoon, with increasingly sore feet (but maybe no
new blisters) passed pleasantly enough as my course
took me through some small villages and some quiet
woods and over some low hills until I reached
Blackwell Green at about 7:15pm. I had hoped
there might be a B&B there but no such luck. I
decided to grab dinner in the village pub, which I
did, then continue walking until I reached a small
wood I could see on the map. I didn't reach
there until 8:45pm, by which time light was starting
to fade. It's a very small wood with cars
passing nearby and, I suspect, is where locals will
be walking their dogs in the morning. However,
beggars can't be choosers, and I quickly found
myself a spot to set up camp and was very pleased to
get my shoes and socks off and crawl into bed.
It will be a longish day
to get to Chepstow (across the Severn Bridge)
tomorrow, but I may try to get there and then may
take a day off to see if that lets some of the
wounds heal.
