I genuinely have no idea how I’m going to squeeze a blog post out of today, it was just a 14.9 mile plod. It was more of a chore than anything, a way to get from A to B. We’d planned to jump back on the coast path to Portishead, the in-process England Coast Path has been opened along this section. Ah, nostalgia! It was like being on the South West Coast Path all over again. God I miss that trail. But of course, just because a path exists here, that doesn’t mean Somerset County Council has bothered doing anything about it.

It was raining when we left the hotel, not a relentless pissing rain but definitely enough to drench any and all foliage which renders it unbearably unpleasant when it feels like you’re the first people to push through it in centuries and you’re on the verge of discovering lost civilisations, their cities reclaimed by surrounding jungles. Yeah nah, we’re not that intrepid. We put up with it for about a mile before fucking it off in favour of a tedious road walk.

And tedious it was, but very, very functional and quick. It helps that it’s flat too, we covered loads of ground despite the fact Tarrant’s ankles are getting slowly worse and not a single one of our combined total of four feet were happy about crushing miles on concrete. We swung by a little local café called The Corner Café which does breakfast and a cuppa for a fiver, and I pulled an absolute unit of a tick off Tarrant. That’s the biggest one yet! Good job I got it before it drained half her fucking blood. It was so hard to remove I wondered if we might just have to amputate below the knee.

There was more road walking and we passed a very nice house with a gorgeous, elderly sight hound and the owner let me pet her as we chatted. She asked where we were going and when we told her she looked confused.
“What are you doing here?!”
Oh don’t even go there! We told her about the awful trails and she said they don’t bother with bridleways either, she’s a horse rider, they’re always complaining but Somerset County Council gives no fucks if you’re not in a car or on a bicycle.

Anyway, we plodded around the cycle lanes to the M5 and followed it over the River Avon (still more pleasant than the vast majority of Somerset footpaths), found a pub and sat down for a tasty, cold motor impairment beverage. It’s very important when walking miles on tarmac to sit down regularly and rest your weary feet. It was a classic local pub, a dying breed, patronised by blokes getting slowly sloshed on Fosters and real ale.

It was quite a pleasant walk after that, through local woodland containing two whole trigpoints! Well, one and a bit, poor old Penpole has had its top battered off. Kings Weston was right up against someone’s fence and a very shouty dog demanded to know what the fuck we thought we were doing.

On we plodded, onto Cribbs Causeway along the cycle path towards our accommodation. We’d booked another hotel as my brain still wasn’t quite right and just knowing we had somewhere to aim for relieved a lot of anxiety. A bloke pulling into his driveway stopped us and asked us if we wanted a brew which was so lovely of him and warmed my heard, but we were about 100 metres from our hotel and at £88 a night we wanted to spend as long as possible in it.

I’d been chatting with an Instagram mate about how it’s soul destroying paying, like, £80 for a hotel room which wasn’t much better than a £40 guesthouse you’d stayed at elsewhere, but Mollie’s Motel was worth the money just because we could cast Tarrant’s phone to the massive telly on the wall. Oh my fucking gosh. That’s it, we’re buying beer and slobbing around in our pants catching up on Marvel series. This was so good for our mental health, slobbing nights are something we both enjoy and whilst we’d had rest days, they’d not been quite right. We were reluctant to part with so much money for a room but honestly, glad we did.

STATS
Day: 76
Day on LEJOG: 35
Distance walked today: 14.9 miles
Total walked so far: 916.83 miles
Weather: Started off pissing rain, was overcast most of the day after that, then cleared up to become muggy with a bit of sun
Coldest temp last night: Not recorded
Trigs bagged: 2
Trigs to date: 50
“Have you read ‘The Salt Path?'” (Running Total): 9
Tick tally: Tarrant 3 ; Claire 4

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Clevedon, Somerset to Cribbs Causeway, Gloucestershire, England

Stayed at: Mollie’s Motel & Diner, Cribbs Causeway

Useful shit to know…

• If we’d stayed on the coast path I don’t think there would have been any amenities until Portishead. To be fair there weren’t many along the road route we took.
• The Corner Café does a decent brekky and there’s a convenience shop nearby too.
• Once you’re past the M5, the Hope & Anchor does a cheap but decent pint.
• There are public toilets in the park at Blaise Hamlet but we didn’t visit so I’m unsure of the state of them.

BUDGET for one person (based on two sharing)
Accommodation, Mollie’s: £44.15
Groceries: £9.65
Breakfast, Corner Café: £5
Beers: £13.89
Grand Total: £72.69