This time last week I had just got back from walking the Mendip Way
I got the train to Weston-super-Mare on Saturday the 26th of September, started the walk on the Sunday, arriving at the end in Frome on Saturday the 3rd of October, and then got the train home last Sunday. At the start of the week before the holiday, it looked as if there was a non-zero chance that England might about to go back into deepest lockdown and the holiday would be cancelled. I was despondent about this prospect, not least because all of my holiday this year has been in the form of four-day weekends, and I was really looking forward to that full week off. However, on Tuesday, at my lowest, I thought to look at the Ordnance Survey book of circular walks within a short train-ride of London that I'd bought last year, and I found at least 5 that I was genuinely enthusiastic about. So if the Mendip holiday was cancelled, assuming the necessary trains were still running, I would still take the week off work, and get to walk in some unfamiliar countryside. As it happened, I did get to go to Somerset, but I'm looking forward to finding a suitable time for my week of day-walks.
I'd booked the holiday last October though Encounter Walking Holidays, a small family business based in Cornwall that specialises in the south west of England and that seems to be the only travel agency that offers self-guided walks on the Mendip Way. The route stretches 50 miles from Weston-super-Mare to Frome, and in my research I discovered that Frome has a craft market called the Frome Independent that takes place on the first Sunday of each month and that looked fun. Late-August seemed too likely to be uncomfortably hot whereas late-September was more my range, so I booked the holiday to put me in Frome on the first Sunday in October. Of course, the market has been cancelled since March with no indication of when it might resume, that was the background to the timing.
I've sorted out my photos and captioned them, and you can see them here.
Preparations for the trip
Rather to my surprise, Encounter Walking sent me the route notes, luggage tags and three OS maps last December, before I'd even paid the balance for the holiday. The detailed itinerary arrived a couple of weeks before the start of the holiday, a bit later than under normal conditions as they wanted the pandemic-related information to be up to date. The itinerary had information about locating hotels and about options for meals and refreshments, and a summary of each day's walking. It said that they'd made 7 pm dinner bookings for me in most of my hotels, to be sure I wasn't caught out by lockdown restrictions on restaurant capacity; I really appreciated this, and kept almost all of the bookings.
My last walking holiday was a group walking holiday in Devon n early May of 2019, and the experience of finding sufficient cover to have a pee on Dartmoor got me looking into "urination devices" - i.e. ways to allow people without penises to pee standing up. I did some research after that holiday but the reviews I read didn't help me decide, but then this summer I read an article in the Washington Post that reviewed the devices mainly with a focus of reducing contact with surfaces in public toilets during the pandemic, and this gave top marks to the pstyle, both for functionality and for not having a cutesy name. I ordered it from amazon, with shipping from the States. It arrived in early August, I tried it out a few times in the shower, and then a couple of weeks before the holiday I got serious about practising, doing it fully-dressed and into the toilet bowl. I never had a mishap, and I really appreciated not having to wash my hands after peeing.
At some point last year I bought a pair of hiking poles, largely because I thought they might be useful for balance while crossing streams, say. I chose the design that collapsed to the shortest length, but they still looked as if they would be awkward to carry on the train and there's also the scientific fact that people with walking poles look like prats, so I was dithering about taking them. However, a few days before the trip I spoke to my friend Vic who had recently returned from a holiday in Somerset with a lot of walking near Bath, and she enthused about poles (especially the way they reduced stresses on the knees during descents), so I dug out the leaflets for my backpacks and finally found out which of the various loops and straps were intended for carrying walking poles.
Saturday the 26th: train to Weston-super-Mare
My Paddington train was just before 1 pm, with a mere 7 minutes to change at Bristol Parkway for the train to Weston. We were 5 minutes late leaving Paddington and got steadily later, and I'd resigned myself to an hour's wait in Bristol, but the train was still at the platform when we pulled it, so I legged it up the stairs and all was fine, and I got into Weston just after 3 pm, which was the check-in time at my hotel. Maybe they always hold the Weston trains for the London trains, but they didn't tell me that.
I was in the Royal Hotel near the sea front. The hotel has seen better days, but my room was lovely, and the food and service were great. I'd seen on the walk from the station that Weston didn't have much to offer, but went out for a wander along the prom, buying an ice-cream and deciding against spending £2 to visit the pier. And then back to my room to faff around with my luggage and try to decide what I needed in my 16 litre daypack and what go in my 33 litre "main" luggage that was going to be transported each day.
Sunday: 9 mile walk to Webbington
I'd ordered a packed lunch the night before and collected it at breakfast. My instructions were to have my luggage ready for collection by 9 am, so I took it down to reception immediately after breakfast, and set off around 9.30.
The Mendip Way actually starts at Uphill, which is at the western end of the 2-mile-long Weston beach, so I first had to walk to Uphill, but that was no hardship on a sunny Sunday morning. I don't think I followed the proper route at first - the route notes weren't super-clear, and if there were way-markers, my eye was not yet trained to spot them - but I did see the marker at the point of the first turn inland, and so felt I was properly on my way.
I might as well say here that while the route notes were accurate, I think there was room for improvement. They included copies of sections of OS maps with the route marked, but it was marked in a thick, opaque line that obscured details on the ground that would have useful for navigation, so you didn't know if you were supposed to be walking alongside a field boundary, or if the next section was on a footpath or a farm track, or maybe an actual road? Yes, I did have the OS maps themselves, but they are large and unwieldy, and I couldn't face checking back and forth between the map and the route notes. A translucent line would have made the route just as clear, but let me see what to look for. And the written notes didn't use any grid references or any indication of the distance along the current section to a given feature such as a stile - so it you lost track of where you were in the long list of "turn left at A, then right at B, then across the stile at C and go straight on", then there was nothing to help you figure out where you were supposed to be on the map and help you get reoriented. There were a few places in which the instructions were extremely useful, but I did lose the trail a few times, though not usually for more than the space of a field, and I caught myself partly with the map-reading skills I'd learned last October, and partly from thinking "surely there would be a way-marker here if this was the path?" I gave this feedback about the notes on my return (in an email rather than on the website), but have not yet heard back.
Anyway...the first "event" on the walk was the arrival in the village of Bleadon just before midday pub-opening time. I had a pint of IPA on a bench outside and chatted with a couple of keen local hikers. Exactly what a country walk is supposed to be. And then, once I was up on the road above Bleadon (getting my first sight of Glastonbury Tor, about 35 miles away), I felt I had sufficient privacy to get my poles out of their various loops and try them out for the first time. I felt self-conscious for the first 10 minutes, but then got over that and just enjoyed the rhythm.
Not long after, on the same road, I reached a parking area with a viewpoint south to the Bristol Channel, and stopped for a drink and a sandwich. There were several cars parked there, but after my break I established that they were all empty, and so I arranged myself by the wall overlooking the view and deployed my pstyle for the first time in the wild. I heard the sound of a car as I was peeing, and that turned out to be a new car arriving, but I don't think they realised what I was doing. I used it several times on every walk, and it was trouble-free.
My hotel was in the hamlet of Webbington, and turned out to be partway up Crook Peak, which is probably the part of the Mendips with the most distinctive profile, as an outcropping at the top gives it a noticeable angle at the summit. I got there just after 3 pm check-in time, with plenty of time to have a pint on the terrace, and then have a bath, and then take advantage of my huge room to spread out the full contents of my packs and do some more faffing. It was definitely the most upmarket stay of the trip, and a good start.
Monday: 11 mile walk to Cheddar
The day started misty and remained overcast, and by evening it was raining. The first section was across moorland around the back of Crook Peak and beyond, and I discovered that my poles sing in windy conditions. They're hollow aluminium with holes for the length-adjustment pegs, so indistinguishable from a flute, really. I thought I remembered Vic telling me about her poles singing too, but we've spoken since and hers are sadly silent.
The village of Shipham is at the midpoint of the route. I took a detour to the pub but found it shut - which wasn't entirely surprising on a Monday lunchtime in late-September, during a pandemic - but the bench outside was a good place to have my sandwich, and it was sunny enough at this point for me to take off my shirt and apply sun-screen.
The route notes rated the 11 miles as 9 miles moderate and 2 strenuous. Those 2 miles were the last, up the west side of Cheddar Gorge, along the edge and then down into town. The views were worth it, but the ascent and descent were brutal and I really felt the benefit of the poles, for hauling myself up on the ascent, and for balancing during the hectically uneven descent. I arrived at my B&B around 5 pm, and immediately applied some of Lush's menthol-and-clay Volcano Foot Mask to my throbbing feet, and then later washed it away in the shower. It helped, though my feet were still throbbing away when I turned off the light, and it felt like a miracle to find them completely silent when my alarm went off in the morning
My B&B didn't do evening meals but the route notes listed various restaurants, including a Thai one that I'd passed on the way in. I was really in the mood for a green curry, but it turned out it wasn't open on Mondays so I went to an Italian restaurant I'd also passed on the way in, where I had an excellent seafood risotto and glass of Frascati. My landlord had mentioned a "serious foodie" pub further along the road into town, but my feet couldn't face a walk into the unknown.
Tuesday: 6 mile walk to Priddy
In an ideal world I would have spent Tuesday morning visiting the caves in Cheddar Gorge but in this world they're currently shut, so I just took enough of a walk to admire them from the outside, and then set off around 9 am into a surprisingly sunny day. Priddy is a small village just below the ridgeline of the Mendips, and the day's walk involved a climb to the ridge, and then a walk along it for some miles. The route notes rated it as 3 miles moderate and 3 miles strenuous, and I initially though "the walk along the gorge plus 50%? Oh, dear god" but in fact I spent the whole walk waiting for it to get even slightly strenuous. I might be fitter than I realised, and I also give credit to the poles. This was my favourite day of walking, with consistently fine views in lovely weather.
Shortly after I reached the ridge, I saw a couple heading towards me, and when they got close enough, the man said, "Are you Fiona?" I answered with a wary "Ye-e-e-es?" and it turned out that they were Mike and Ellie, who were doing all of my luggage transfers that week. They had already dropped my pack off at my Priddy homestay, and had found themselves with time for a walk. We had a nice chat, in which they said that if I didn't feel like walking on a particular day, I should just call them and they would be happy to transport me along with the pack. I enthused about the poles and then, after a brief hesitation, whipped out the pstyle (in its plastic bag) and told Ellie all about it. She seemed genuinely glad of the information.
I did come across other walkers of most sections of the route, and we'd always exchange greetings and sometime stop for a chat. However, I seemed to be the only person doing a through-hike of the Mendip Way. A waitress at the hotel in Frome said they got quite a few hikers staying including, once, a group of at least 25, whose arrival with a mountain of luggage had presented a real practical challenge for the staff. However, at that time of year, with the pandemic and everything, I had the route largely to myself.
I had been expecting to listen to a lot of podcasts during the walks, as podcasts are an important part of my morning walks in London. However, the urge never struck me. I was busy navigating, and wrangling my poles, and taking photographs, and just "being present", as Carlos put it when I mentioned the podcast thing in our lesson this Tuesday.
It was in the approach to Priddy that the opaque line led me to go straight on towards the houses when I should have turned right and skirted that section of the village, and so I was working with a false idea of my position in Priddy for several hours. I did find the pub, and had a pint and fish and chips, and a nice chat with a Bristol-based woman on a day-hike, but then I headed off in the wrong direction after the pub and so was about 20 minutes later than necessary arriving at my homestay. Irksome but instructive. I'd planned to have dinner also in the pub (it's the only option in town), but lunch had been late and large, and I just had a shower and read and dozed.
Wednesday: 6 miles to Wells
For at least a week the forecast has been saying that persistent rain would arrive from Wednesday, and it was not wrong. It wasn't raining while I was at breakfast, and I decided I might as well set off early, since there would be coffee shops and other shelter in Wells, when there was nothing in Priddy. It did soon start to rain, and after about a mile I decided to put on my waterproof trousers.
The route was rated as moderate and was all downhill. It went through the Ebbor Gorge Nature Reserve and the route notes mentioned a view point for the drop of the gorge a short distance from the route, but with the rain, I just wasn't in the mood. The route also went through the village of Wookey Hole where there is a famous cave that is currently open, but you have to book online in advance and I'd read that you didn't get much time in the cave, so I decided to keep my money and just had a brief break for an ice-cream. It wasn't a miserable walk at all and my waterproofs kept me comfortable, but I was mainly focused on reaching the end.
My hotel was the Crown Inn at Wells, on the market square across from the cathedral, and I arrived around 12.30 pm. Check-in wasn't until 4 pm but my room was ready and they let me in. And that seems a suitable point to end this post, as Wells is the end of the West Mendip Way, and as I had two nights booked in Wells since I thought it looked a good place to take a rest-day.
Let's have a couple of photos, though:
This is from Monday morning, as I'm heading away from Crook Peak. The bump just to the right of centre on the horizon is Glastonbury Tor.
And this is from Tuesday, looking back as I'm approaching the ridge. The water is Cheddar Reservoir, and the bump on the hill above the right-hand edge of the reservoir is Crook Peak.
This entry was originally posted at https://helenraven.dreamwidth.org/488174.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I'd booked the holiday last October though Encounter Walking Holidays, a small family business based in Cornwall that specialises in the south west of England and that seems to be the only travel agency that offers self-guided walks on the Mendip Way. The route stretches 50 miles from Weston-super-Mare to Frome, and in my research I discovered that Frome has a craft market called the Frome Independent that takes place on the first Sunday of each month and that looked fun. Late-August seemed too likely to be uncomfortably hot whereas late-September was more my range, so I booked the holiday to put me in Frome on the first Sunday in October. Of course, the market has been cancelled since March with no indication of when it might resume, that was the background to the timing.
I've sorted out my photos and captioned them, and you can see them here.
Preparations for the trip
Rather to my surprise, Encounter Walking sent me the route notes, luggage tags and three OS maps last December, before I'd even paid the balance for the holiday. The detailed itinerary arrived a couple of weeks before the start of the holiday, a bit later than under normal conditions as they wanted the pandemic-related information to be up to date. The itinerary had information about locating hotels and about options for meals and refreshments, and a summary of each day's walking. It said that they'd made 7 pm dinner bookings for me in most of my hotels, to be sure I wasn't caught out by lockdown restrictions on restaurant capacity; I really appreciated this, and kept almost all of the bookings.
My last walking holiday was a group walking holiday in Devon n early May of 2019, and the experience of finding sufficient cover to have a pee on Dartmoor got me looking into "urination devices" - i.e. ways to allow people without penises to pee standing up. I did some research after that holiday but the reviews I read didn't help me decide, but then this summer I read an article in the Washington Post that reviewed the devices mainly with a focus of reducing contact with surfaces in public toilets during the pandemic, and this gave top marks to the pstyle, both for functionality and for not having a cutesy name. I ordered it from amazon, with shipping from the States. It arrived in early August, I tried it out a few times in the shower, and then a couple of weeks before the holiday I got serious about practising, doing it fully-dressed and into the toilet bowl. I never had a mishap, and I really appreciated not having to wash my hands after peeing.
At some point last year I bought a pair of hiking poles, largely because I thought they might be useful for balance while crossing streams, say. I chose the design that collapsed to the shortest length, but they still looked as if they would be awkward to carry on the train and there's also the scientific fact that people with walking poles look like prats, so I was dithering about taking them. However, a few days before the trip I spoke to my friend Vic who had recently returned from a holiday in Somerset with a lot of walking near Bath, and she enthused about poles (especially the way they reduced stresses on the knees during descents), so I dug out the leaflets for my backpacks and finally found out which of the various loops and straps were intended for carrying walking poles.
Saturday the 26th: train to Weston-super-Mare
My Paddington train was just before 1 pm, with a mere 7 minutes to change at Bristol Parkway for the train to Weston. We were 5 minutes late leaving Paddington and got steadily later, and I'd resigned myself to an hour's wait in Bristol, but the train was still at the platform when we pulled it, so I legged it up the stairs and all was fine, and I got into Weston just after 3 pm, which was the check-in time at my hotel. Maybe they always hold the Weston trains for the London trains, but they didn't tell me that.
I was in the Royal Hotel near the sea front. The hotel has seen better days, but my room was lovely, and the food and service were great. I'd seen on the walk from the station that Weston didn't have much to offer, but went out for a wander along the prom, buying an ice-cream and deciding against spending £2 to visit the pier. And then back to my room to faff around with my luggage and try to decide what I needed in my 16 litre daypack and what go in my 33 litre "main" luggage that was going to be transported each day.
Sunday: 9 mile walk to Webbington
I'd ordered a packed lunch the night before and collected it at breakfast. My instructions were to have my luggage ready for collection by 9 am, so I took it down to reception immediately after breakfast, and set off around 9.30.
The Mendip Way actually starts at Uphill, which is at the western end of the 2-mile-long Weston beach, so I first had to walk to Uphill, but that was no hardship on a sunny Sunday morning. I don't think I followed the proper route at first - the route notes weren't super-clear, and if there were way-markers, my eye was not yet trained to spot them - but I did see the marker at the point of the first turn inland, and so felt I was properly on my way.
I might as well say here that while the route notes were accurate, I think there was room for improvement. They included copies of sections of OS maps with the route marked, but it was marked in a thick, opaque line that obscured details on the ground that would have useful for navigation, so you didn't know if you were supposed to be walking alongside a field boundary, or if the next section was on a footpath or a farm track, or maybe an actual road? Yes, I did have the OS maps themselves, but they are large and unwieldy, and I couldn't face checking back and forth between the map and the route notes. A translucent line would have made the route just as clear, but let me see what to look for. And the written notes didn't use any grid references or any indication of the distance along the current section to a given feature such as a stile - so it you lost track of where you were in the long list of "turn left at A, then right at B, then across the stile at C and go straight on", then there was nothing to help you figure out where you were supposed to be on the map and help you get reoriented. There were a few places in which the instructions were extremely useful, but I did lose the trail a few times, though not usually for more than the space of a field, and I caught myself partly with the map-reading skills I'd learned last October, and partly from thinking "surely there would be a way-marker here if this was the path?" I gave this feedback about the notes on my return (in an email rather than on the website), but have not yet heard back.
Anyway...the first "event" on the walk was the arrival in the village of Bleadon just before midday pub-opening time. I had a pint of IPA on a bench outside and chatted with a couple of keen local hikers. Exactly what a country walk is supposed to be. And then, once I was up on the road above Bleadon (getting my first sight of Glastonbury Tor, about 35 miles away), I felt I had sufficient privacy to get my poles out of their various loops and try them out for the first time. I felt self-conscious for the first 10 minutes, but then got over that and just enjoyed the rhythm.
Not long after, on the same road, I reached a parking area with a viewpoint south to the Bristol Channel, and stopped for a drink and a sandwich. There were several cars parked there, but after my break I established that they were all empty, and so I arranged myself by the wall overlooking the view and deployed my pstyle for the first time in the wild. I heard the sound of a car as I was peeing, and that turned out to be a new car arriving, but I don't think they realised what I was doing. I used it several times on every walk, and it was trouble-free.
My hotel was in the hamlet of Webbington, and turned out to be partway up Crook Peak, which is probably the part of the Mendips with the most distinctive profile, as an outcropping at the top gives it a noticeable angle at the summit. I got there just after 3 pm check-in time, with plenty of time to have a pint on the terrace, and then have a bath, and then take advantage of my huge room to spread out the full contents of my packs and do some more faffing. It was definitely the most upmarket stay of the trip, and a good start.
Monday: 11 mile walk to Cheddar
The day started misty and remained overcast, and by evening it was raining. The first section was across moorland around the back of Crook Peak and beyond, and I discovered that my poles sing in windy conditions. They're hollow aluminium with holes for the length-adjustment pegs, so indistinguishable from a flute, really. I thought I remembered Vic telling me about her poles singing too, but we've spoken since and hers are sadly silent.
The village of Shipham is at the midpoint of the route. I took a detour to the pub but found it shut - which wasn't entirely surprising on a Monday lunchtime in late-September, during a pandemic - but the bench outside was a good place to have my sandwich, and it was sunny enough at this point for me to take off my shirt and apply sun-screen.
The route notes rated the 11 miles as 9 miles moderate and 2 strenuous. Those 2 miles were the last, up the west side of Cheddar Gorge, along the edge and then down into town. The views were worth it, but the ascent and descent were brutal and I really felt the benefit of the poles, for hauling myself up on the ascent, and for balancing during the hectically uneven descent. I arrived at my B&B around 5 pm, and immediately applied some of Lush's menthol-and-clay Volcano Foot Mask to my throbbing feet, and then later washed it away in the shower. It helped, though my feet were still throbbing away when I turned off the light, and it felt like a miracle to find them completely silent when my alarm went off in the morning
My B&B didn't do evening meals but the route notes listed various restaurants, including a Thai one that I'd passed on the way in. I was really in the mood for a green curry, but it turned out it wasn't open on Mondays so I went to an Italian restaurant I'd also passed on the way in, where I had an excellent seafood risotto and glass of Frascati. My landlord had mentioned a "serious foodie" pub further along the road into town, but my feet couldn't face a walk into the unknown.
Tuesday: 6 mile walk to Priddy
In an ideal world I would have spent Tuesday morning visiting the caves in Cheddar Gorge but in this world they're currently shut, so I just took enough of a walk to admire them from the outside, and then set off around 9 am into a surprisingly sunny day. Priddy is a small village just below the ridgeline of the Mendips, and the day's walk involved a climb to the ridge, and then a walk along it for some miles. The route notes rated it as 3 miles moderate and 3 miles strenuous, and I initially though "the walk along the gorge plus 50%? Oh, dear god" but in fact I spent the whole walk waiting for it to get even slightly strenuous. I might be fitter than I realised, and I also give credit to the poles. This was my favourite day of walking, with consistently fine views in lovely weather.
Shortly after I reached the ridge, I saw a couple heading towards me, and when they got close enough, the man said, "Are you Fiona?" I answered with a wary "Ye-e-e-es?" and it turned out that they were Mike and Ellie, who were doing all of my luggage transfers that week. They had already dropped my pack off at my Priddy homestay, and had found themselves with time for a walk. We had a nice chat, in which they said that if I didn't feel like walking on a particular day, I should just call them and they would be happy to transport me along with the pack. I enthused about the poles and then, after a brief hesitation, whipped out the pstyle (in its plastic bag) and told Ellie all about it. She seemed genuinely glad of the information.
I did come across other walkers of most sections of the route, and we'd always exchange greetings and sometime stop for a chat. However, I seemed to be the only person doing a through-hike of the Mendip Way. A waitress at the hotel in Frome said they got quite a few hikers staying including, once, a group of at least 25, whose arrival with a mountain of luggage had presented a real practical challenge for the staff. However, at that time of year, with the pandemic and everything, I had the route largely to myself.
I had been expecting to listen to a lot of podcasts during the walks, as podcasts are an important part of my morning walks in London. However, the urge never struck me. I was busy navigating, and wrangling my poles, and taking photographs, and just "being present", as Carlos put it when I mentioned the podcast thing in our lesson this Tuesday.
It was in the approach to Priddy that the opaque line led me to go straight on towards the houses when I should have turned right and skirted that section of the village, and so I was working with a false idea of my position in Priddy for several hours. I did find the pub, and had a pint and fish and chips, and a nice chat with a Bristol-based woman on a day-hike, but then I headed off in the wrong direction after the pub and so was about 20 minutes later than necessary arriving at my homestay. Irksome but instructive. I'd planned to have dinner also in the pub (it's the only option in town), but lunch had been late and large, and I just had a shower and read and dozed.
Wednesday: 6 miles to Wells
For at least a week the forecast has been saying that persistent rain would arrive from Wednesday, and it was not wrong. It wasn't raining while I was at breakfast, and I decided I might as well set off early, since there would be coffee shops and other shelter in Wells, when there was nothing in Priddy. It did soon start to rain, and after about a mile I decided to put on my waterproof trousers.
The route was rated as moderate and was all downhill. It went through the Ebbor Gorge Nature Reserve and the route notes mentioned a view point for the drop of the gorge a short distance from the route, but with the rain, I just wasn't in the mood. The route also went through the village of Wookey Hole where there is a famous cave that is currently open, but you have to book online in advance and I'd read that you didn't get much time in the cave, so I decided to keep my money and just had a brief break for an ice-cream. It wasn't a miserable walk at all and my waterproofs kept me comfortable, but I was mainly focused on reaching the end.
My hotel was the Crown Inn at Wells, on the market square across from the cathedral, and I arrived around 12.30 pm. Check-in wasn't until 4 pm but my room was ready and they let me in. And that seems a suitable point to end this post, as Wells is the end of the West Mendip Way, and as I had two nights booked in Wells since I thought it looked a good place to take a rest-day.
Let's have a couple of photos, though:
This is from Monday morning, as I'm heading away from Crook Peak. The bump just to the right of centre on the horizon is Glastonbury Tor.
And this is from Tuesday, looking back as I'm approaching the ridge. The water is Cheddar Reservoir, and the bump on the hill above the right-hand edge of the reservoir is Crook Peak.
This entry was originally posted at https://helenraven.dreamwidth.org/488174.html. Please comment there using OpenID.