Monday 10th June - Ebbor Gorge Walk

When I started this walk, I wondered whether I should schedule a rest day each week, preferably (especially as I’m a Christian) Sunday.  It isn’t that I think Christianity is about adhering to a fixed set of rules, but, as Mandy’s sermon last weekend said, it’s important to rest intentionally, instead of just keeping working until you collapse.

At that time, though, I really didn’t feel that I needed a rest.  I had only just begun my walking challenge the day before, and I was still full of energy.  Walking didn’t feel like a chore that I needed to rest from, but a holiday.  Also, I didn’t know how long good walking weather could persist for, so I wanted to make the most of going walking on every clear day that we got, before torrential rain and thunderstorms – or extreme heat – set in.

As my first week wore on, though, I noticed that I was slowing down.  From 20 miles on Saturday 1^st June, and 18 (because I took time out to go to church) on Sunday 2^nd, I went down to 16 by Monday and Tuesday, and my feet were hurting a lot after managing 21 on Thursday 6^th, to the point where I was relieved when Friday meant I had other activities scheduled.  Even after Friday’s partial rest, though, my walk on Saturday was a fairly mediocre 15 miles.

So when this Sunday came round, and I noticed that PDB11 was looking a bit depressed and I asked him whether he would feel happier if I took a day off for us to spend together, I was relieved when he said yes.  We drove to church (as he was playing the organ at Chewton Mendip, too far from home for it to be practical for either of us to walk to in time for a 9.30 service), came home and played Scrabble, and had lunch. 

We didn’t actually spend the whole day interacting closely, as I spent most of the afternoon catching up on writing fanfiction.  I had missed having time to write stories while I was busy writing and blogging about my walks, and I wanted to complete the final instalment of the novella I had been writing – imagining a character from an Alan Bennet play who finds himself transported to a space station from the science fiction of James White – for our next writers’ group.  At any rate, it was good to be able to show PDB11 my writing.

On Monday, I woke up feeling refreshed and ready for a long walk.  I decided to go to Pen Hill itself, with its tall mast for Mendip UFH Transmitting Station, and its fields of long grass with skylarks (are they skylarks?  I’m not good at identifying birds) and from there go on to pick up the West Mendip Way through Ebbor Gorge.

In addition to birds, Pen Hill has damselflies.  I think the ones I saw here may have been common blue damselflies, judging by their long, light blue bodies with black markings, whereas the ones I saw on the River Chew with turquoise bodies and black wings might have been banded demoiselles.

However, it also had horseflies.  I was bitten twice in the space of my walk through a few fields.  Thinking about it, I was surprised that these were my first horsefly bites this year, when they usually start attacking from May or so (though I had been bitten by a tick a few weeks ago, which thankfully didn’t infect me with anything nasty).  I suppose it shows that I haven’t been getting out for enough country walks until now.

The signs in the fields around Pen Hill warn us firmly to keep to the footpaths around the edges of the fields, and enforce this by putting up electric fences as inner boundaries, marking out the track between the electric fence on one side and dry stone wall with or without accompanying hedge or barbed wire on the other.  However, by the fourth field I passed through, this alleged ‘right of way’ was a mass of nettles, and there was a clearly trodden footpath just inside the electric fence barrier.  I ducked under the wire and used that path.

Then I was out onto the long, straight, stony track that is Dursdon Drove, where there were more small brown nondescript-looking birds which, by the sound of their chirps, might have been stonechats.  I headed west along this route until I found the turning south onto the Monarch’s Way, which would take me to Wookey Hole and the next stage of the West Mendip Way.  This walk, after crossing a field of cattle (there was a sign warning me to beware of the bull, but the only cattle I met were some perfectly amiable cows and calves) took me to a path down a hill covered in tall thistles with magnificent purple flowers and a fantastic view of Somerset and Dorset spread out before me.  I wished I hadn’t lost PDB11’s camera, but a photograph couldn’t have done justice to this expanse anyway.

PDB11 had gone into Wells, both for a dental check-up and to find out about buying a replacement camera.  However, as he texted me to inform me, it is now very difficult to buy small, simple digital cameras, because shops can’t make much money out of buying them because customers just buy them and go on using them for years and years without coming back to buy accessories like extra lenses for them.  So there is now little on the market between big expensive cameras for serious photographers, and phones that also take pictures.

Recently we had been exploring Take the Jump, a campaign which encourages people to avoid waste by, amongst other things, keeping gadgets at least seven years.  We had discussed how we don’t technically do that, because we generally buy something second-hand when it’s about five years old, and then go on using it until it stops working, which is typically another five years. 

But one problem that Take the Jump seems not to have foreseen is that shops might not want to sell you things which won’t wear out or need replacing in a few years.  As PDB11 concluded, probably his best option here is to look for a second-hand camera.

I passed through Wookey Hole, noticing a café by the entrance to the caves.  Almost out of habit, because I had reached the mid-point on my walk, I wondered whether I needed to go in and order a cup of tea as an excuse to use their loo, and realised that, actually, I didn’t.  There wasn’t too much pressure on my bladder, I wasn’t tired, and I had refreshments with me for when I got hungry or thirsty.  I just wanted to have a few mouthfuls of diluted apple juice from the bottle I’d brought with me, and keep walking.

As the West Mendip Way led me towards Ebbor Gorge, I met a fox cub who emerged from a hedge, looked at me in alarm, and hastily retreated.  A few years ago, in 2020 during lockdown, when wildlife was becoming astonishingly confident, PDB11 and I had met a fox strolling across a field – again in broad daylight – who not only seemed unconcerned by our presence, but even turned repeatedly to look back at us, allowing us to take his photograph.

This cub wasn’t quite as complacent, but the fact that he was out at all was a reminder that foxes don’t have to be nocturnal animals (unlike owls, bats and similar), and that it is usually fear of humans which drives them to stay out of sight in the daytime.

The walk through the Gorge, along the rough pebbles at the bottom and up the steep path of rocks, was deliciously cool after the heat of the summer sun, without ever being cold enough to make me want to put my jacket on.  I hadn’t been here for much longer than Pen Hill, and it was a beautiful place to renew acquaintance with.

Emerging from the woods, I got back onto Dursdon Drove and headed east and back home, along familiar paths between little patches of woodland in the Pen Hill area, along Haydon Drove and Old Frome Road, and back across Maesbury Castle.  This was all familiar territory.  What wasn’t so familiar was that I was out from 9am until 8.30 pm and had walked 22.6 miles and climbed 1,862 feet, and yet I didn’t feel tired or footsore until the final mile or so.

Having a rest had clearly done me good.  Admittedly, the next walk will need to be shorter, as I’ve promised to help PDB11 deliver some more election leaflets, but I’ll try to get some more miles in until I need another break – or until the weather enforces one.