LEJOG day 14: Street to Midsomer Norton

Today was a brilliant day! I may be somewhat under the influence of cake, tea and compliments.

Yesterday was my day off walking, but my fitbit tells me I managed to rack up 16,000 steps and cover 6 miles or so, which may indicate that my sense of what constitutes a "lazy day" may have been somewhat skewed by all of this. I had to donate my left kidney to pay the entrance fee for Glastonbury Abbey- which doesn't have a roof or four complete walls, I may add- and for a brief moment as I left their museum (ok, that bit was a complete building- but modern!) I knew an awful lot about its history, most of which I have now forgotten. It claims to be the burial site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, and also apparently was founded by Christ's uncle or great-uncle, I forget which, in AD69. What some older relative of Christ's was doing in Somerset in AD69 they didn't bother to tell me- founding Churches, principally. 

As a break from all the history, I climbed Glastonbury Tor. They claim that St Michael's (maybe?), the church which used to stand on top, fell into ruin because of the dissolution of the monasteries, but personally I feel it would have had a better shout at survival if you didn't have to climb 512 feet basically straight up to get to it- the surrounding Somerset levels being pretty much at sea level. No one is going to do that every Sunday morning. 

Today, I started off by walking the longest and least-pavemented route from Street to Glastonbury that I could find, which I instantly regretted, because walking along an A-road isn't so bad if you have pavements, and then spent the rest of the day sauntering along a nice mixture of quiet country lanes and really quite spectacularly well-maintained and -marked footpaths. The only dodgy bit was the last 1/3rd of a mile or so along a B-road to my B&B- made easier by the prospect of cake on arrival. To further boost my spirits, I booked a table at the gastropub back down the same 1/3rd of a mile of B-road, and tomorrow I shall be in Bath after a mere 15 mile amble, with another rest day ahead of me to explore! 

Distance walked: 20.01 miles
Time taken: Runkeeper is playing up again, but fitbit reckons I was active for 6h48 today
Percentage completed: 20.4%
Boot cost per mile: £0.37
Lunch: a slightly disappointing "good for you" egg and cress sandwich from Morrisons, followed by two flapjacks- one bought, one brought- meaning nearly 3 weeks I am finally now carrying only one bag of flapjacks...
Last night's B&B: Old Orchard House, Street: a lovely couple who did my laundry and fed me and made me tea and had a hunk of apple cake waiting for me when I arrived and generally did everything to make things nice, plus sharing walking stories of their own, and the tale of their son's LEJOG cycle

 Arches
 More arches. Note absence of roof
 Doesn't this look familiar? Thinking that as I took the photo got the "Four Chords" song stuck in my head for hours
 Alpaca pack!
 The cottage at the bottom there had nice barge boards
 Clematis
 I will from here on only photograph wisteria if there's more of it than in this photo
 What a lych gate!
 Church, no idea which
What time of year is the solar panel harvest? 

Comments

  1. Nell - Gardening in Wales4 May 2017 at 22:14

    ... and I was pleased when my wisteria had 10 flowers on it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Latti4 May 2017 at 22:17

    Well done. Greetings Form Chepstow

    ReplyDelete

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