Miles to Go - Days Fourteen and Fifteen

 Wednesday 14^th July 2021

Of late, I have not been blogging regularly about my walks.  It would be nice if this were because I was too busy doing all-day walks every day, but I’m not.  It would be nice if it were because I was busy with other things like writing stories, writing letters to friends, making home-made birthday cards for friends who have birthdays, and spending quality time with PDB11 – not to mention doing mundane things like housework – but the truth is that I have let all these slide as well.

In reality, what I have mostly been doing is feeling sorry for myself.  My routine has settled into something like: wake up, decide to get the day off to a good start by making hot drinks and reading aloud for over an hour (we are currently reading Dodger by Terry Pratchett, which is an exciting story with fairly long chapters).  Find something to worry about anyway, have breakfast, spend the next few hours wallowing in angst, picking arguments with PDB11 even though I know I’m being irrational, and obsessively searching for articles on the internet about whatever I’m worrying about.

By this time, it’s nearly lunchtime, so I might as well make lunch, play Scrabble and wash up before venturing out – and by now it’s already a hot July afternoon, which isn’t the best time for walking.

Nevertheless, the walks mostly do something to lift my mood, eventually.  On Wednesday, I decided to pick up the East Mendip Way from where I had left it at Chelynch the previous week.  I got mildly lost in Doulting at the start, but then found my way onto the path around Pitts Wood, and around Ingsdons Hill.  I could see that Ingsdons Hill was a glorious expanse of farmland, covered in ripe golden wheat and red-golden barley, but I was too despondent to allow all that beauty to cheer me up.

I passed into Shepton, and made a detour down Kilver Street Hill in the hope of finding a cup of tea.  My hopes weren’t very high, as it was now 5pm, too late for the cafés to be still serving people, and too early for the pubs and restaurants to be open yet.

Or so I thought – and then I saw that Whitstone’s Fish and Chips was open.  Since this is a lovely restaurant – not just a takeaway – and I hadn’t been there for a long time, I decided to order a snack, even though it had been only a few hours since lunch.  I asked for a pea fritter, salad and orange juice. 

The waitress said, ‘You do realise that doesn’t automatically come with chips?  Do you want chips?’  I said no thank you, I only wanted a light snack.  Since I was the only customer, I could hear the waitresses asking each other, ‘Did she really say no chips?’  As I realised that it was strange to go into a fish and chip restaurant and order neither, I felt I should explain that I didn’t mean any offence to their chips, but that it hadn’t been long since I’d had a jacket potato for lunch, and I felt I’d had enough potato for one day.

At any rate, the food had cheered me up, and I was in a much better mood as I set off across Barren Down.  Somehow, I wandered onto the wrong path and got lost trying to find where the East Mendip Way crossed the B3136.  I stumbled around in the steep slopes under the viaduct, where there were discarded and burnt remains of blankets and clothing under nearly every arch, looking as if people had camped there.  At one point, I fell and scraped my elbow, and had to use the contents of one water bottle on washing my hands before trying to clean off the wound, and then another bottle on trying to clean the grazes themselves.  (When I got home, I needed to ask PDB11 to inspect the damage and put a plaster over the worst cuts, as I couldn’t see to do it properly.)

This all felt more like an adventure than something to be upset about, but, nevertheless, time was getting on.  By the time I had rejoined the East Mendip Way and followed it to the B3136 – the usual road I would take if going into Shepton Mallet for grocery shopping – it looked like time to head for home, and so I resolved to continue the route the next day.

Thursday 15^th July

Thursday’s walk began with my going into Shepton Mallet to buy a loaf of bread and a couple of cans of baked beans at Tesco.  Since I was in town, I decided to go to the Sue Ryder charity shop and donate The Wave Theory of Angels while I was at it.  Looking for quirky places to leave a Bookcrossing book is all very well, but giving it to a charity shop improves its chances of actually being read.

While I was there, I couldn’t resist browsing the books already for sale, and spotting a copy of The Bluebird Café by Rebecca Smith.  Since this is set in my home town of Southampton, it seemed a shame not to give it a try.  I glanced around the rest of the shop, just for fun, before heading on to Tesco.

One thing I have learnt about face masks is that through them, even trying to convey basic information, like, ‘I would like to buy this book and I want to donate that book to you,’ is difficult.  Making small talk, like, ‘Do you think the toy on the left is an Ewok playing dress-up as Darth Vader?’

just makes shop assistants anxious as they wonder what you’re asking them to do.  The checkout assistant in Tesco mistook my plastic-coated map (which I had taken out of my backpack while I arranged groceries in it) for a novelty shopping bag with a map printed on it, and I had difficulty communicating, ‘No, it’s just a map’ to him through the mask, either.

Leaving Shepton Mallet, I passed through a narrow alley

back onto the East Mendip Way, past the equine adventure playground that is Rosamond Green Farm,

and down through Ham Woods.  These woods are so dramatic that I think that gyms which offer a video of a walking route to play while you exercise should offer this as well as their videos of the Americas and New Zealand.  You start by descending a long zigzag of flights of steps

(or end by ascending them, if you're travelling east) 

Having done this, you are standing in a disused quarry, with magnificent rock walls rearing up on one side.

I emerged into fields (and onto the map to the west of the map I live on).  Here, there was a double gate between farms, but, in striking contrast to my adventure on Tuesday, instead of being two gates covered with nettles, they were two freestanding gates barely attached to anything, including fences or hedges. 

I could have walked round them, but walked through so as to make them feel they had a useful job to do.

I was far enough on in my walk to be not yet footsore, but weary enough to fall into a contented rhythm of slow, gentle walking through golden fields of hay in golden sunshine. 

Earlier in the week, a friend had suggested that I should take twenty minutes out, three times a day, to meditate.  I had felt that this wasn’t exactly the time for it, when I planned to spend much of each day out walking.  But now I found that the rhythm of my feet was just right for repeating a helpful phrase to myself, over and over.

Again, time was running short, and by the time I reached Crapnell Lane, it was time to turn back.  If I follow any more of the East Mendip Way, it will need to be part of an all-day walk.

Miles walked Wednesday: 11 

Miles walked Thursday: 13 

Total miles walked: 140