Tuesday 27 April 2010

Day 10 Sedgemoor to Bristol

Woken today at 6.00, in my Sedgemoor Service Station Motel room, by who or whatever was in the room above me, herding around. After deciding to rise I left the service having no breakfast, the six pound continental option did not excite me, so I brought a number of snack items from the main service station. Wanting to stay off the A38 to start, I noticed a path across a field on the map, but this was not evident on the ground, I might have "gone for it" but for the cows in the field. So the slower option of the roads was chosen. Within half an hour I had a herd of these lovely beasts running towards me. As I made my way up the lanes, a local farmer asked me to wait as he was moving a herd of young beasts for the first time from the farm into their new field home. So wait I did, confident Mr Farmer knew what he was doing. Then came the herd, at me, help I screamed - not really, but just at the moment the herd was meant to via left away from me into the field, then decide to join me and my walk to Scotland. All was sorted with no injuries to man or beast. No more cow events followed but two brave snappy dogs behind the safety of their gate decided to let me know they were there and also wanted to joint me. So from the safety of the other side of the gate I decide to film them until the owner appeared, and even at a great distance, gave me such a look for "winding up" her darlings. Following notification from work about a new structure, I was heading for Bristol Airport, when guess what I saw, a plane, yes there was that, but more amazing out of the distance appeared Justin. So who's Justin I hear u ask, well don't be so impatient, otherwise I won't tell you. Justin appeared walking along the A38 with a mega rucksack. This was not a rambler but a serious walker, could it be? I wondered a JOGLE'r (John O Groat-Land's End), get with the acronyms. Yes it was. We both stood and introduced ourselves, for both it was their first meeting with a first fellow adventurer. A long chat followed, following with lashings of mutual respect. He has however, completed 80% verse my 20% but we had lots to discuss, including his start at JOG in the blizzards. I gave Justin the website name and hope when he reads this it is a true account of events outside Bristol, on Tuesday afternoon. One other theme running throughout today was the police, they were never that far away.They must of heard a dog hater was entering the area. It started with a phone call to the Somerset Constabulary regarding a camera, no luck there. Followed by numerous sighting including the first car of the day, a police car with sirens through a sleepy village, a passing on a country lane, at speed, walking alongside some beat coppers and finally in Bristol some dealing with a traffic incident. Another confusing event today was me crossing into and out of Somerset, a few times. This being the North Somerset/Somerset border, I think that's over now, Gloucestershire should be my next county, sometime tomorrow. Final, talk about small single bedrooms, the one in the YHA tonight is small, however it is on the top 5th floor so no being woken by herds of elephants above, unless their on the roof. 36.4km done today, i make that over 200 miles now. This is now the second attempt at sending this, the first was with a video clip, which for some reason hasn't worked.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Russ,
    just caught up with the last fews days worth of blogs. Sound like a pretty eventfull few days. Really bad news about the camera - hopefull it might get handed in???. When you reach the midlands, watch out for the bluenoses.
    Up the villa!
    Paulw

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  2. Your doing well, but sorry to hear about the camera.

    If you bump into a backpacker with a dog (a nice one!) it may be Andy and Alfie (the dog) who are doing a LEJOG also and are in very roughly the same area - I wouldn't be suprised if you bump into them at some point along the way.

    Well done so far - you have some great stuff to come!

    Sophie

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  3. Thats your best blog post to date! Nice one! Keep up the good work!
    Adrian

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