Jeri’s Steps: 35,833
Miles walked: 14.8
Elevation: 1,427
Pints: 3
Churches: 3
Stiles: 3
Benches: 1
The New Inn in Coleford was very comfortable; a spacious room, a bright modern bathroom and a great dinner and breakfast; smoked haddock for Tim and eggs florentine for Jeri. The parrot was cheerful.
The route was similar to yesterday; a mixture of well marked footpaths and tracks (though none of today’s were on named longer distance routes) and Devon lanes with high hedges.
Due to yesterday’s rains we encountered mud. It’s interesting to note how red this soil and mud is; the colouration is caused by iron chemicals from ancient deserts. The iron percolated down from higher desert rocks and passed down into the Devonian rocks beneath, causing the red staining. Well done Devon for having an entire geological period of 60 million years named after the county!
Lunch comprised a picnic sitting on a wall in Sandford. We bought crackers, Cornish yarg cheese, locally made pork pie and ginger beer from the excellent Sandford Community Stores. The owners were so helpful and also interested in hearing about our LEJOG adventure.
Although shorter than yesterday, the end of the day was tough, with an uphill slog to the Silverton Inn. The last two miles is often difficult but you are encouraged by the approaching end. We were also encouraged by a gentleman on a bike who was walking his dogs; he matched his pace to ours and was delighted to hear about LEJOG; he said we were the first people he’d met who were actually doing it.
A word about stiles. A stile is a wooden, steel or stone structure designed to allow the walker to easily climb over a field boundary when there is no gate. In our daily and cumulative stats we have included ‘kissing gates’ within this category, but excluded normal gates. We hope this avoids any confusion caused by the daily photographic record.
The best part of the day is getting to the room, removing your boots and having a cup of tea. For a while, nothing else matters. Dinner and bed tonight at the Silverton Inn.
Download file for GPS
New Inn resident 
This is not a stile 
Tim leads the way… 
Red Devon mud 
Knowle church 
Devon cows 
Picnic provider 
Old and new-view from our picnic spot 
First cornfield (that’s wheat to the Americans) 
Thorverton church 
Sandford
4 Responses
Great commentary! Really enjoying every day’s descriptions of your walk. So happy for you both to be able to do your dream walk. We went to dinner with Matt & Beth and recalled the many times we were together at Mission Burrito. Had a nice time. ♥️
You are managing milestone after milestone close to your 200 miles already ,the crunchie bar helps enjoy somerset cider
I was just thinking about what an historic adventure you are both on. Not necessarily historic in the sense of miles walked, days spent, goals achieved but in the sense that you are literally walking through history. The steps you take between towns and villages are the steps that would have been taken by our ancestors hundreds and thousands of years ago. Britain has shrunk with the advent of the motor car, the train; motorwars and fast routes shrink the country to a few hours travel from one corner to another. Now you are making Britain bigger – greater – again by walking. In ancient times, distances would be calculated by the day – a mornings walk to a market, a days walk for a cleric to another parish, roman legionnaires march to another barracks. The places you visit were founded not by town planners but by people wanting a place by a river, or where there is a meeting of paths, or up on a hill where there was safety. You are seeing the landscape of the nation through the eyes of people of the past. Every muddy lane, every slope ascended to a church or village, is an historic reenactment of times gone by. So your descriptions in this blog give us living history. It doesnt matter how far you go, or in which direction, the point is that you are discovering the britain of the past and making history live. Well done both.
Yes indeed we are moving through landscapes and seeing them change. From the rocky shores of Cornwall to the rolling hills of the Devon interior. Soon we will cross the Somerset levels. We look forward to these changes but at our pace they take days to transect.