Jeri’s Steps: 33,010
Miles walked: 13.8
Elevation: 629
Pints: 3
Churches: 2
Stiles: 6
Benches: 2

300 mile mark reached!!

Another hot day. We started at 8:30 and visited the Co-op in Tetbury for supplies. The morning started off quite fast with small roads and good tracks and none of that getting lost nonsense from yesterday. There was a plethora of benches early on, but we were too ambitious to actually sit on any of them so today’s bench count is unreasonably low. Gloucestershire is fond of gates so the stile count also suffered.

We visited the churches in Ashley and Rodmarton. At Rodmarton we spoke to a man who was finishing up some gardening work in the churchyard and he chatted with us. When we mentioned LEJOG he talked about his hiking trips in Spain. Regarding refreshment we concluded there were no shops or pubs nearby, but he did point us to a water tap outside the cottage near the church so we were able to fill up our camelbacks with cool water. ‘You won’t find that on your garmin now will yer?’ he said.

Northeast of Tarlton we came across another disused canal, the Thames and Severn and sat on a bridge eating our bread rolls (with bacon and sausage left over from breakfast). The canal was completed in 1789 and at the time had the longest canal tunnel in Britain; our lunch time bridge was just east of the tunnel entrance. The trough of the canal seemed quite deep and the sides were lined with stone, unlike the Grand Western canal in Somerset were in many places the line of the old canal had the appearance of a shallow track.

Walking through fields, the farmers had created easy paths through barley and rapeseed, both of which looked close to being harvested. We also passed by the sources of two great rivers today; the Avon and the Thames. The Monarch Way was our guide for long stretches but it was interesting to encounter an intersection with the Wysis Way near the Thames source; this links the Thames Path to our old friend the Offa’s Dyke Path. We got to our B&B just after 4:00 with plans, after a suitable rest, to visit a nearby Indian restaurant for dinner. There’s been too much pub food of late.

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