Saturday 1st June - East Mendip Way

On the first day of my walking trip, I woke to a soft, birdsong-filled pre-dawn shortly before sunrise. 

There was no frantic hurry to be off; I had time to have a leisurely breakfast and three mugs of tea, put out the recycling, and fill up the bird-feeder and watch the birds on it. 

Feeding birds in spring and summer, when there are plenty of insects and small slugs and snails around, feels indulgent – shouldn’t they be hunting their own food?  But I suppose putting out suet-cake for the parents helps them to have enough energy to hunt insects for their chicks, and it’s certainly popular at this time of year. 

Initially when I hung a lump of suet-cake out, it was mainly of interest to families of magpies, who would sit in a circle on the ground and take turns for one of their number to fly at the suet-cake and ram it with his/her beak until it crumbled and fell through the gaps in the feeder.  But now it’s popular with an assortment of smaller birds, mostly tits and finches, and even with a pied woodpecker. I don’t enough about birds to identify the smaller ones with certainty, apart from the bluetit.

Still, by 7 I set off.  I decided to head through Harridge Wood and along the Fosse Way until I met the East Mendip Way, and then follow this trail through Shepton Mallet to Wells.  I moved slowly through Harridge Wood, not just because it was muddy and I had to pick my way carefully, but because I kept stopping to notice the flowers: yellow buttercups and tormentil; white cow-parsley, wild garlic, garlic mustard and daisies (not to mention the brambles in full blossom); blue bugle and speedwell; pink campions and cranesbills, and purple foxgloves.  In other woods on my walk, I would pass more species, from bluebells to stitchworts.

Was it really worth paying so much attention to them, when I can see most of these even in the cracks in the concrete in my back yard?  I think it is, because it reminded me of why I was doing this.  A wood, or at least a deciduous broadleafed wood, is not just a collection of trees.  Flowers and the insects that feed on them are just as much a part of its ecosystem as trees and the birds and bats that roost in them (which, of course, feed on the insects).  The fact that there is a fair amount of sunlight on the forest floor for part of the year (unless the whole forest is beech, which hangs onto its dead leaves through winter) gives the smaller plants a chance to live.

I suppose it works differently in an evergreen tropical forest, where the smaller plants have evolved to live alongside the trees.  I don’t have much experience of natural conifer forests in boreal regions.  But commercial conifer plantations, where a monoculture of one tree is planted as closely as possible, aren’t good for biodiversity, and so the work of conservation charities like Somerset Wildlife Trust (which owns Harridge Wood) and the Woodland Trust (which owns Beacon Wood) is to restore a diverse range of mixed woodland.

Eventually, I got out of the wood and onto the Fosse Way, an old Roman road which is now a footpath.  This was how PDB11 and I used to get to Shepton when, during lockdown, we walked there a couple of times a week to buy groceries.  When I walk to work in Shepton, I usually walk along the pavement beside the A37, as it’s quicker and I’m less likely to arrive in dew-soaked jeans and muddy boots.   But this way is far more fun and doesn’t stink of traffic fumes.

I joined the East Mendip Way shortly before Shepton Mallet, which is harder than it looks, as it isn’t always well signposted.  Shortly after joining it, I briefly took a wrong turning because it turned out that the correct continuation of this trail was not the beaten track continuing in the direction I was walking in, but a near-overgrown footpath indicated by a small blue plaque at knee-height. 

I took a brief detour into Shepton, as I urgently needed to use the loo in Tesco (my fault for drinking three mugs of tea before setting off).  This done, I continued along the trail, past the equine adventure-playground that is Rosamond Green Farm, through Ham Woods with its dramatic climb down a steep flight of steps, and out into the fields and onto OS Map 141, Cheddar Gorge & Mendip Hills West.  I barely even noticed climbing over the map margin, but continued along Thrupe Lane, over footpaths across fields, and into King’s Castle Wood, near Wells, where I stopped to eat my lunch.

It was at this point, checking directions, that I realised that I had lost my compass.  This adventurous piece of equipment has parted from me before, once hanging itself on a passing nettle.  This time, I had no idea where it had gone, but decided that if I retraced my steps along the East Mendip Way, I had a fair chance of finding it.

I didn’t.  I asked various passing people whether they had seen a compass, but they replied very literally, ‘I’ve seen mine,’ or, ‘I’ve got one on my phone,’ which wasn’t exactly helpful in locating my own compass.  Several of the people I passed were out jogging, and understandably didn’t want to stop for long.

The way back was uneventful, apart from being forcibly escorted out of one field by a load of bullocks.  They are quite impressive when they stampede, but, as they didn’t actually want to hurt me, they weren’t sure what to do when I turned round to face them, other than to back off slightly.  However, they were very insistent on crowding around me until I left their field.  I had to climb the fence, since opening the gate would have been an invitation to them to flood out into the road.

I gave up the search for my compass after a while, hoping that whoever finds it will enjoy taking it for walks.  I decided that from now on, at least until I had a chance to buy a replacement, it was best to stick to clearly identifiable minor roads (preferably yellow, for minor roads less than 4m wide, or light amber for slightly larger roads that aren’t B-roads) instead of an ambiguous walking trail.

However, I did take one cross-country path across Maesbury Castle, as this hill-fort has plenty of happy memories for me.  One problem is that, when you are up on the grassy space in the middle without a compass, the ring of earthworks around it looks much the same in all directions.  So, looking at the time (mid-afternoon) and the position of the sun (south-west), I followed my shadow (pointing north-west) to identify the right place to exit and find the path down.  It reminded me of a story a friend of mine had written about a group of migrating wild geese, where the younger geese are discussing the mystery of how they all know which way to fly, while the older ones laugh at them for over-analysing it so much when it’s simply a matter of following your beak.

After this, I headed up to Binegar to make my walk a satisfying length, and wondered whether to go further – maybe to Emborough Grove and Lechmere Water?  But time was getting on, and I didn’t want to overdo things on my first day.  After all, I made nearly twenty miles, which wasn’t a bad start.