Day 11 Cossington to Wells: Across the Slough of Despond

For an OS map of today's walk click here.

It wasn't quite as miry as the slough in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, but it was a tough day. I joked with Ken that the highlight for today's blog was going to be seeing a snail cross the road at several different places.

We knew the forecast was not good but hoped against hope that they were wrong. They were right. Rain all day. Mostly road walking from Cossington to Wells across the Somerset Levels, a barely-above-sea-level landscape characterized and determined more by water than by land. No pubs or villages to stop at on the way. We walked from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and only got to sit down once. We found a dry spot at the edge of a road under an evergreen tree and literally sat in the road and ate the ham sandwiches our kind B & B host had packed for us. Fortunately only one car passed us, its owner looking irritated that we were sitting in his way. If this sounds pitiful, it's meant to.

Our one huge mistake was in the middle of the afternoon when we were tiring. We took a public footpath instead of the road in an attempt to make the walk shorter. The end of the path that we could see had a brand new "public footpath" sign, and the path looked well trodden. Unfortunately, that was only half the story. The latter part of the path had tall, wet grass, then a muddy ploughed field, and the stile to exit the field was blocked with fallen branches and nettles. We ended up climbing a gate to get out, leaving thick red mucky clay footprints on the road. Later as we walked along the road there was actually a nice bench beside the river at a pump house, but it was so wet and the rain so unpleasant we couldn't bring ourselves to sit down.

Pining for our nice room at Brookhayes...

The rain, which in the morning had only been a light drizzle, seemed to increase in intensity as the day went on. So as our feet grew more and more sore from an entire day of road walking, the conditions grew more and more cold, unpleasant and difficult. Usually Ken is the one whose feet give out and start hurting near the end of the day, but this time both of us were really hurting. We finally arrived at Wells, stopping briefly at a table outside a pastry shop for a drink and a snack; we were so muddy we felt like we couldn't sit inside but it was raining and cold and the sidewalk awning barely covered us, so it wasn't exactly a refreshing break. We could hardly move after that, but limped on past the cathedral to our B & B where our host took our wet things to dry and gave us tea in front of the fire. Hot baths also helped.

Lessons of the day: don't schedule 18 miles of road walking with nowhere sheltered to stop, and never, ever try to take a shortcut footpath on the Somerset Levels!

43, 359 steps, 32.519 km, 1, 383.3 cal
OS getamap measured distance: 17.00 mi (27.36 km)

[Although of course it would have been a much better walk had it not been so rainy and cold, even with better weather it would have still been a very tough day walking all that way on the road in hiking boots, even the light-duty ones we have. There actually was another way across the Levels that was about a mile shorter and did have a pub at around the halfway point, but it would have taken us for a couple of miles along a B-road that is the only major road to cross that part of the Levels, so I was afraid to take us that way as it is very scary—and dangerous—to walk along busy roads. But I'll always wonder just how busy that B-road really is...—Ken.]