Just four participants this Saturday; Pete, Phil, Trevor and Bill. Following torrential overnight rain and a misty, grey early morning start we decided to go ahead as planned and as soon as Trevor and Phil sorted out which pub named after a four legged animal (The Bull or Old Red Lion) we had arranged to meet up at, we were off. Heading East along the road we soon came across four legged animals of another sort: a couple of alpacas and a goat.
We turned left, crossed a small paddock, climbed a stile, negotiated an electric fence and immediately received a setback - a field full of excitable heifers. They were contained by an electric fence but were blocking our way to the next stile.
Casting right then left and finding no other way out of the field and the heifers becoming more excitable by the minute we decided to retrace our steps, at which time a large hare raced across our path prompting a number of Trevor’s best Christmas cracker jokes.
Returning to the road we continued East until we reached a small crossroads where we strolled downhill towards Cook’s Farm.
At the farm we turned 90 degrees left and headed towards King Alfred’s Tower following a gravel track until we reached a marked footpath and turned West.
Here the going changed as we crossed a beautiful but soaking wet wild flower meadow. We could see that someone had walked our route some time earlier and so we followed their footsteps which thankfully took us through a number of gates and stiles with accompanying yellow footpath markers.
At several places we encountered more electric fences and Trevor made unusual use of Bill’s lead to safely lift the wires while Pete and Phil stooped underneath- declining Phil’s suggestion of limbo!
Crossing the footbridge over the infant River Brue our objective was in sight and we traversed the largest field that we were to encounter. This was crisscrossed with numerous electric fences which had the footpath route handily marked by lengths of light blue hosepipe and showed our way back to the pub. We had walked 3.2 miles taking an hour and forty minutes.
Entering the Old Red Lion we were greeted by Anne and Tom who plied us with tea, toast and marmalade and a magnificent full English breakfast.
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