B2B Day 9 Luxborough to Crowcombe--Leaving the Coleridge Way

For an OS map of today's walk (13.23 mi; 21.3 km; 1,943 ft total ascent) click here.

Today we were both tired and wondered if we would make it to our night's destination, but we did. We had several uphill and downhill parts to the day's walk.

The host at the Royal Oak had kindly dried our boots, stuffed with newspaper, by the radiator. Ken asked if people still took newspapers, and the host said that they did take two newspapers that came once a week. The inside of our boots were nice and dry, though the outside looked still wet with bits of grass and other things. Walking through the fields today cleaned them up somewhat.

We began going through fields which had thankfully mostly dried from yesterday's rain. We encountered many, many sheep, including a field of rams.

A shorn ram

It seemed to take a long time before we got to the forest path.

One of the views, showing the reddish soil of the ploughed fields

Crossing one field, it looked like there were two cows guarding their fort from intrusion:

Cows defending their hill fort

We went through Longridge Wood, which was well-waymarked (always a comfort, since forest paths can be deceptive, as we've found!).

We arrived at Roadwater and stopped at the Valiant Soldier pub, where Ken had a pint of lemonade. The publican was really nice, and we liked the feel of the pub. We then went to the Roadwater store, run by volunteers from the community.

A bench outside Roadwater Stores

We bought two sandwiches, one of which we thought was ham and tomato. When we got outside the store to a bench outside where we were going to eat (with a nice garden beside it), we found that it was cheese and tomato. I went in to mention the incorrect labelling, and they kindly gave us a ham salad sandwich and let us keep the cheese and tomato sandwich. We enjoyed seeing people come and go to what seemed like a very busy community shop.

As we were leaving Roadwater, we saw thatchers newly thatching a roof, which was fascinating to see. On one side of the house, the workers were taking handfuls of straw out of large bags and fitting them onto the roof. On the other side of the house, one worker was using what looked like a hedge trimmer to trim the straw roof, and the other one had what looked like a flat toothed instrument with which he whacked the roof to pack things down and comb out loose bits.

Thatchers at work

 Instead of going up on the official Coleridge Way, where there was a friendly horse waiting at the path entrance,

we decided to walk along a trail that was formerly the West Somerset Mineral Railway. Sara took a photo of the mineral railway waymark.

We don't watch Dr. Who, but doesn't it look a bit like a tardis?

We walked through a tunnel that took us under the railway, and up a steep uphill farm track. When we got to the top, there were dire warnings about how impassible the road was. Having walked from bottom to top, we believed it! No car or truck could get down there and return to tell the tale.

After we reached the top of this dire farm track, we decided to take a different (and we hoped, more level) path than the Coleridge Way. We began by opening a gate in a garden's fence that was like entering wonderland. It was beautiful, and the pathway was mown. The next path was nice as well: though without a path, it had a good meadow.

Ken walking through the meadow

The next field, however, had no discernible public footpath, and where the footpath should have been was full of brush, fallen trees, and other obstacles. We thought we saw a faint trail in the grass, walked along it, and came to the other side of the field. No gate or outlet. We went down a slight slope through ferns and other plants to see if we could find the path or gate, but there was nothing. We ended up turning right and walking along the fenceline to find an outlet. We ended up trespassing through a farm with quite a posh-looking manor house, up on a red muddy path to the farm road and then out. We lost a lot of time doing that. Farmers are obligated to keep the public right-of-way open, and we were not too happy that the one in whose field we found ourselves had not done so.

Once back on a path, it took us through several fields, including one of grain that felt soft to the touch if you waved your hands over it while walking:

Walking through waist-high grain

We arrived in Monksilver and stopped at the Notley Arms for a pint of lemonade. It was a beautiful pub, and the people were friendly. We sat out in the garden and heard the bell-ringers practicing. We really liked that village, and as we walked out we chatted with a woman who was one of the bellringers.

The village of Monksilver

After walking through two fields with the path bounded on one side by an electric fence, and on the other side by the ever-present nettles, we walked through a sunken lane and then on to Stogumber walking on the roads. 

At one point, we were heading uphill on a road, and we saw a man driving several cows down the road. We asked him what we should do, and he said just to talk to them as they walked down. The cows were extremely skittish, and they balked and didn't want to go past us. We were worried they would hurt themselves, because at certain points they were almost climbing over each other to turn around and get away from us. The man behind them in a vehicle managed to coax them past us. We discovered later that the cows had "lost it" in their excitement and that our trousers had been somewhat affected by the encounter.

At Stogumber, we stopped at the shop but there were no sandwiches.We went on to the pub where Ken got a pint of lemonade, and we walked along the road to Crowcombe. When we arrived in the village and were heading down the street leading to our B&B, it was a bit surreal to experience a teenager going down the street on a segue playing loud rap music. We've been out in the countryside so much it seemed out of place. We met our host Trish on her way to Yoga class, who greeted us and told us that her husband would make us at home. He did. We ate our dinner in the garden, and Rob brought us some tea. Olive the lovely black lab kept us company, and we enjoyed seeing the birds and flowers. It was nice to end so peacefully what was a long and sometimes painful day of walking.