This walk was splendid, one of our best yet. We caught the 376 to Chewton Mendip (site of an earlier not so great walk before I knew you should never go anywhere without an OS map or you will get lost and miss all the things), stopped at the Mendip Pantry to pick up some incredible pies, scotch eggs, lush baked goods of all sorts. Highly recommended. We ate our first pie alongside the church, which is so unexpectedly grand. It has Saxon origins, was rebuilt in the 12th century, most of what you can see was built in the 1400s by Carthusians and patched and rebuilt again across the centuries and into the 1800s (but look at the door, I mean just look at it)
Be still my heart. The tower is from the 15th century.
Not a terrible band, no, a lovely village on the edge of the beautiful Mendip hills. We got off the bus with a walk printed off the internet in hand, and off we went.
Actually, no, first we stopped at Lynda’s Loaf for pies and hot cross buns…and, well, we also got some eccles cakes. Because it was amazing, smelled like baking bread because that’s where they bake the bread, and everything looked delicious. And it was.
So off we went. This is the last ever walk we print off the internet. The instructions were bad, we walked through fascinating landscapes with no information and lost ourselves there several times.
We did learn that ‘combe’ mostly means ‘bog valley’. Still, it’s beautiful. If we’d have had the OS map, we might have found the barrow, the cave known as the Attborough Swallet, known where the lead mine workings were, the lime kiln exactly. Next time.
We should also have looked up the church, unexpectedly beautiful and rich
Norman arch!
Being Good Friday we didn’t go in, but I regret it terribly now as wikipedia quotes Wade and Wade in their 1929 book “Somerset”:
The chancel contains the only extant specimen in Somerset of a frid stool, a rough seat let into the sill of the N. window of the sacrarium for the accommodation of anyone claiming sanctuary.
The countryside was beautiful today though, and we stumbled across these Dr Seussian clumpings of grass that made me happy indeed:
Waiting for the goddamn OS map to arrive to find out what they might be. Mine workings we think. Perhaps.
Then open space. Sky. Joy.
We got lost here. But I suppose it resulted in one of my favourite photographs, though I do want to kick that person who wrote this walk in the head.
Ill humour could not survive these guys though:
ZOMG LAMBS!
I fucking love lambs. And sheep too lazy to stand up.
And all of these sheep actually, even the grown ones. It makes a difference when you can’t actually see their vacant yellow eyes staring blankly at you, just the crazy hair that makes them look like a cross between the impossibly fluffy sheep and the victorious sheepdog from some of my favourite Wile E. Coyote cartoons:
It was all downhill from there.
Literally and figuratively. Despite this:
There was only one dog on puppy lane, and he was no puppy, though bless him.
And it being a holiday, the pub closed early. So no pints for us to toast achey limbs and sore feet. Because this is the first walk in a long while. But yay spring.
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Just communities. Just cities. Just connections between country and city. Also, the weird and wonderful.
