17 July 2021

Distance recorded: 19.8km (+7.5km)

I changed my plan for today when I arrived in Bridgwater yesterday. At Stert Point where the River Parrett Trail ends there is no road and there are no services, so the only option if you’re on foot is to walk back out. The village of Combwich is 7.5km back. I realised that with a full pack and given the forecast for today – full sunshine and 27° – I wouldn’t finish the walk in time to collect my car from where I’d left it in Taunton before the parking I’d paid for expired. So I booked an extra night in Bridgwater, took the train, collected my car a day early, left most of my stuff in my bedroom in the morning and set off with a light pack and plenty of water.

Joining the Parrett again at the main road bridge on the northern edge of the town, a sign confirmed I had also joined the newly-designated England Coast Path. Following the coast, Bridgwater is the first place you can cross the Parrett.

The tide was out as I set off. I had followed the river, more or less, as it changed from a chirping, gurgling infant bouncing over stones and tree roots at Haselbury Mill, though its adolescence flowing purposefully and steadily through the flatter lands around Langport. But now it had matured into a monstrous serpent whose sinuous curves lay in sweeping arcs between Bridgwater and the sea. Nacreous mud banks shining like dark silver in the sun threatened to swallow anything daring to set foot beyond the bank.

Even a small tributary looked evil

Pausing a little later I saw the tide was flowing in strongly around the sweeping bend.

Incoming tide in the Parrett Estuary

It’s less than six kilometres as the crow flies from the start of today’s walk to Combwich; it’s more than twice that following the river. I could see Combwich from a long way off, sometimes ahead, sometimes to my right, sometimes on the left. It was hot. There was no shade. I went into the state of mind author Andrew Greig¹ calls “amnesiac time”.

Then at last there was a road, houses, mums and dads packing kids into cars to ferry them to Saturday activities. Combwich at mid-day. Some trees. The Anchor Pub.

The Anchor, Combwich

Sitting inside where it was cooler I drank a ginger beer and devoured a cheese and tomato ciabatta. Seven and a bit kilometres to go – and the same back. I phoned the taxi firm in Bridgwater I’d spoken to yesterday and booked a car to collect me from the pub at 6.00pm.

Beyond Combwich the land is almost all a nature reserve heavily geared towards birders. An area of wetland has been created which prevents walkers from following the river bank all the way to Stert point, so about a kilometre after leaving The Anchor the Trail turns away from the estuary under power lines coming from Hinksey Point power station, visible in the distance along the coast.

The nature reserve has a network of well-signed gravel tracks wide enough to drive down so the going was easy – no grass, but no trees either. I passed two or three newish well-constructed bird-watching hides.

The Trail finally joins a small lane at Steart, which has a farm and a few houses scattered along the lane. So close to the end now, I noted but didn’t stop at a patch of deep shade near the farm entrance where trees overhang the road. The lane became a track, then a path which opened into a rough pasture with thistles and sheep. At the far side a signpost pointed left: “England Coast Path. Minehead.” There was a River Parrett Trail waymark, but no other sign to mark the end – or the beginning – of the Trail.

But the GPS on my phone showed I was still a short way from the coast and Stert Point. Across the field was a strange tall wooden construction. It was in roughly the right direction so I went to investigate.

Bridgwater Bay bird hide

It turned out to be another bird hide. I climbed the stairs and looked out of the windows. Another 200 metres further was another small hut with an obvious path leading to it. Sure enough, it was another bird hide, Stert Point Hide. Next to it was a closed gate with a sign telling me this was as close as I could legitimately get to the shoreline. It was the end of my Channel to Channel.

The Bristol Channel

This far and no further!

Just got to walk back to the pub now!

I walked back the way I’d come and stopped in the shade at Steart while I prepared for the walk back to Combwich. I took the lane rather than the paths in the nature reserve in the hope that there might be a few trees and shade. There weren’t. In pre-Covid times I might have tried thumbing a lift from the few cars that passed but I knew it wasn’t worth even trying. But I made it back eventually with about an hour to spare before my taxi was due. I sat outside The Anchor – the tables now in shade – slowly drinking a cold San Miguel and munching some salty crisps while at a table behind me some good ol’ boys with SUVs and trucks with giant tyres exchanged their thoughts on the latest stories they’d read in the tabloids or seen on reality TV shows. I was back in the real world.

Afterthought – England Coast Path

Anyone walking the England Coast Path between Burnham-on-Sea and Minehead is faced with the prospect of following the long, wide meanders of the Parrett estuary all the way to Bridgwater and then back again on the opposite bank with nothing significantly new to see. That’s at least 40 kilometres – a very long day for most walkers with very little progress to show for it. Walking the estuary once might be tolerable, even enjoyable in better conditions than I had, but twice? I think not. My advice would be to walk the Combwich – Steart (western/left) side but get the Burnham – Bridgwater bus for the other.

1: Andrew Greig, “Summit Fever“.

16 July 2021

Distance recorded: 21.1km

I read overnight that the River Parrett is tidal as far as Langport, and sure enough as I rejoined it shortly after leaving the town the water level was a little lower, exposing silt-covered reeds and grasses on the banks of the river channel.

The river meanders vaguely westwards then north-west, though its twists and turns took me through most points of the compass. I passed the sluice where the Sowy River splits away; an artificial flood relief river which eventually joins the King’s Sedgemoor Drain. This Drain is large and important enough to have its own sign on the M5 where the two cross.

I was within a couple of kilometres of Burrowbridge, where I was planning a midday break, when I was startled to see what I first thought was Glastonbury Tor in the distance. After a moment’s thought I realised it couldn’t be; it was Glastonbury’s little brother, the delightfully-named Burrow Mump. It’s owned by the National Trust.

Burrow Mump

I was aiming for the pub in Burrowbridge, the King Alfred, visited and recommended by social media friend @silkskt who had stopped there on her recent walk from John O’Groats to Land’s End. I arrived half an hour before it opened, but gratefully sat at one of their outdoor benches in the shade until it turned 12 o’clock and I could order a ginger beer.

Setting off a little later and back alongside the river I decided to stop for lunch at the next shady place I came to. That turned out to be twenty minutes further. A feature of this open landscape with its sparse tree cover is that there are no fallen trees or logs to sit on; the choice is either to sit on the ground or stay on your feet. In what little shade there is the ground is mostly overgrown with nettles and other spiky things, so I stood. When I was leaving Langport the convenience store had not yet had its delivery of sandwiches, but I’d bought a freshly prepared bacon sandwich, unseen in its brown paper bag, from an ‘artisan bakery’. This turned out to be a generous portion of bacon between two thick, heavy slices of sourdough rye bread – far too dry for walkers’ fare in the hot sunshine. A good half of the bread went into the undergrowth.

A bit further along I passed Westonzoyland Pumping Station – now a museum – on the far bank. It dates from the days when all the drainage works in the area were steam-powered.

Westonzoyland pumping station

By now my dislike of long grass, mown and unmown, had grown into a deep hatred so it was a relief when the River Parrett Trail left the river and headed south-west on a lane to meet up with the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal. The towpath has been upgraded to a national cycle route, so I relished walking on smooth gravel and making good time as far as the outskirts of Bridgwater.

The canal was built to link Somerset’s two major rivers, the Tone (as in Taunton) and the Parrett. I was puzzled to pass several pill box fortifications along the way, obviously dating from WW2.

WW2 pill-box

In my Bridgwater B&B I did a quick internet search and found they were part of the Taunton Stop Line, one of several Stop Lines built during the war as defences against a possible invading army.

Later, I went for an after-dinner stroll and found the Parrett again. Now very much tidal, the water level had dropped right down to expose wide and rather evil-looking mud banks on either side.

15 July 2021

Distance recorded: 23.2km.

Leaving the Mill it wasn’t long before I found conditions underfoot that got me increasingly annoyed and frustrated; mown hay. It doesn’t sound much, and normally has pleasant connotations; “the smell of new-mown hay”. But I’m just at the time in the farming year when the hay has been cut but not baled. It’s lying thick on the ground, completely obscuring any traces of a footpath across the field. I found myself stopping at each hedge, looking for any gap in the hedge on the far side – not always easy!

“Look for the gap in the hedge”

Then there’s the walking. To avoid dragging a bale of hay along with each foot I found I needed to lift my feet higher with every step, as if I was walking with crampons. No big deal? Maybe, but the small extra effort for mile after mile had a cumulative effect on my energy levels.

Is this the path?

But back to the walk. Before long the Trail deviated from the Parrett and went through the villages of Merriott and South Petherton before joining the river again at Gawbridge Mill. These and other villages are what we think of as typical traditional (southern) English villages. I noticed though that every one had recent developments on the fringes, usually expensive-looking houses in small groups; some had tried to complement the vernacular of the older houses, some seemed hardly to have tried. I didn’t take many photos of the villages because every angle would have included several parked cars, usually large SUVs, obscuring the lower parts of the buildings.

Approaching Gawbridge Mill I suddenly realised I was now in the flatlands; there were no hills in sight!

Where have the hills gone?

Gawbridge Mill – now a B&B

The unbaled hay meadows returned in full force over the next stretch from Gawbridge Mill to Kingsbury Episcopi and on towards Thorney. I took a rest in the shade of Kingsbury Episcopi’s churchyard. The tall church towers and spires in this flat countryside are landmarks for miles around.

Kingsbury Episcopi church

Beyond Thorney I crossed the weir and pumping station where the River Isle and the West Moor drain join the Parrett. Controlling these volumes of water takes engineering on a large scale. The view upstream on the Isle confirmed I was truly in the Somerset Levels.

The River Isle

The Parrett, though, followed its natural course towards the Bristol Channel.

The River Parrett near Muchelny

And so finally I arrived in Langport, my overnight stop. It has a surprising entrance – a ‘hanging chapel’ whose interesting Wikipedia page told me “is a 13th-century archway, bearing a Perpendicular building known as the hanging chapel”. The arch was originally the eastern gateway to the town. And yes, there’s a car in the picture.

The Hanging Chapel, Langport

14 July 2021

Distance recorded: 22.3km

The River Brit at Pymore

First sighting in the wild

The Brit Valley Way has its own waymark – a dragonfly and a meandering river – but I was over an hour into today’s walk before I saw the first one – here it is. I shrugged off the thought that I might accidentally follow the Brit Valley Circular Walk.

A morning’s walking through farmland with occasional glimpses of the river through the trees along the banks got me to Beaminster and a ciabatta for lunch at The Red Lion.

River Brit at Beaminster

Leaving Beaminster first on a road then a stony track I started the only notable uphill section of the entire four day walk, climbing up to the top of the downs near the sources of the Brit (flowing south) and the Parrett (flowing north).

Soon after leaving the high point and the Brit Valley Way my planned route left the Chapel Marsh farm track and headed for the village of Chedington, the official start of the River Parrett Trail. However, at the field gate there was no sign of a path across the field but there was a stern notice about equine flu and quarantine. I chose discretion and a simpler way, following the track past the stud farm whose size and style oozed wealth and sent a clear message “Don’t linger here”! Continuing north I joined the River Parrett Trail at the picture-postcard village of South Perrott (yes, it’s a different spelling).

Second sighting.

Leaving South Perrott, Dorset on the delightfully-named Pipplepen Lane I headed north to arrive in North Perrott, Somerset. Near the point where I crossed the railway I found the first official waymark for my new trail, the one I would follow for the rest of my walk. It was in a poor state: this picture is the second one I saw. From North Perrott it was only 3km to my overnight stop at Haselbury Mill, with the Parrett flowing through the grounds.

Haselbury Mill describes itself as a ‘hospitality village’ which I think is much the same as a ‘venue destination’. Despite their main trade being groups with something to celebrate I, as a solitary B&B customer not exactly dressed in the style to which they are more accustomed. was welcomed and treated with friendly courtesy. Well played, Haselbury Mill.

13 July 2021

The plan for the next four days is to walk Channel to Channel, from the English Channel at West Bay, Bridport to Stert Point (north of Bridgwater, Somerset) on the Bristol Channel.

This will be the first solo, unsupported, point to point walk I have ever done – and about time too!

Travelling by bus I was able to go straight to West Bay and walk back the 5km to my B&B in Bridport, saving a bit of time as I head north tomorrow. I’ll be following two designated trails; the Brit Valley Way which follows the River Brit to its source, and the River Parrett Trail from source to estuary.

And so it begins …