Jeri’s Steps: 27,818
Miles walked: 11.4
Elevation: 1,322
Pints: none (wine)
Churches: 3
Stiles: 38
Benches:3

After a generous cooked breakfast at the Ring O Bells we set off at a somewhat late 9:45am in bright sunshine. The first mile was road walking to West Harptree where we visited the church and then shopped at the Spar for provisions. We chatted for a while with a man outside the store who was raising funds for the Somerset air ambulance and he was interested in our LEJOG story. Regrettably, like a lot of other charities we’ve come across, he could not take a cash donation. Odd.

We soon took to tracks and footpaths across mainly fallow fields and hay meadows. Then the big climb of the day came up fast and steep but we were rewarded not just with a great view, but with a stout bench. Walkers give praise to those well minded folk who design and install benches and seats at viewpoints like this. Prospect Stile, as this one was called, gave us views westwards to the Severn river. Lunch was taken on a bench in Hinton Blewitt, where regrettably the pub was just being closed up by the landlady who was off to the hospital to see her husband. She almost demurred and offered us a drink but we told her to carry on with her visit. Luckily we had looked ahead and knew another pub was only two miles down the road. At the Farrington Inn we changed our usual choices and had orange juice and lemonade in the pub garden. Very refreshing in the hot sun. Before the pub, we passed through a small wood which had the most amazing meadows of wild flowers. Just south of Paulton, near a triangulation point, we came across a very unexpected thing, a war memrorial. Not in the center of a village as normal, but on the edge of a field, far from the road. This was a moving memorial to 23 men who died in 1944 when their glider crashed on the way to the battles near Arnhem. See link below;

https://www.paradata.org.uk/article/double-hills-market-garden-memorial

Finally we got close to Radstock, but not before crossing the Fosse Way, an ancient Roman road which runs for about 230 miles from Exeter to Lincoln.