Holiday in the Mendip, part 4 (and final): 2 days spent not walking the East Mendip Way
Well, every day of my life so far has been spent not walking the East Mendip Way, but I was especially not walking it on Friday the 2nd and Saturday the 3rd of October. The Friday walk should have consisted of a 6 miles from Wells to Shepton Mallet (graded Easy), and the Saturday of 13 miles to Frome (also graded Easy). My friend J (byslanted light on LJ) lives just south of Shepton Mallet, and some weeks before the trip, we had arranged that I would arrive in Shepton Mallet for the 2 pm check-in time at my hotel, and we'd meet at 2.30 at Kilver Court Gardens just to the east of town.
By Wednesday, a rainy Friday seemed sufficiently assured that I suggested we forget about the gardens. I was still planning to walk to Shepton Mallet (as I regularly walk 6 Easy miles in the rain in my morning walks), but I didn't want to risk hanging out in the rain waiting for check-in, so arranged with J that I would let her know when I was approaching town, and she would be waiting to pick me up. She also offered to pick me up at any point on the route at which I might decide to bail out. However, after my walk to Glastonbury on the Thursday, with the views from the tor of my whole walking route, I felt I'd walked a route that was complete in itself, and I didn't owe it to myself or the East Mendip Way to walk any part of it. As another friend said, "You're on holiday, not at boot camp." So we arranged that J would pick me up near my Wells hotel at the 10.30 check-out time on Friday, and we'd spend the day hanging out at her new home on an actual Somerset farm. J was also happy to drive me to Frome on the Saturday, but I decided to take the luggage transfer people up on their offer of a lift; it turned out that the phone number given under "Luggage Transfer" on my itinerary was the main office number rather than their mobile number and I just got the machine when I called on Thursday evening, so I wrote a large message on the back of Thursday's itinerary asking them to call me, and lashed it to my backpack in a highly visible location using my bungee-cord washing line. They got in touch with me before lunch on Friday, and we arranged another check-out-time pickup.
Friday in the vicinity of Shepton Mallet
It was raining when J arrived, and continued raining on and off all day. Fortunately J's new home is very cosy - unlike her previous home in the same village - and it was a lovely place to spend a rainy day. She had moved in just a few days before, so it was quite exciting being one of her first visitors. The main moving day had been planned for the Wednesday, but fortunately she was able to adjust around the weather forecast and bring it forward to Tuesday. We chatted about the Bishop of Bath and Wells, watched the cows coming in for milking, lunched on a delicious traybake that J made of chicken with rice and cherry tomatoes with a spicy peanut sauce, and watched the first 5 episodes of detectorists.
Some friends had strongly recommended detectorists when it first came out, and I'd watched the first few episodes when it was first on TV; I could see its charm, but I found Lance's continuing attachment to his ex-wife sufficiently painful that I'd never got up the motivation to watch more, no matter how the recommendations were piling up. On second viewing, I found I could cope even with his serenading her at the pub open mike, and by the time I had to leave for dinner at the hotel, I was a firm convert. I watched the rest of the episodes as soon as I got home, finding the last episode gloriously satisfying, and I am sure I will watch them again many times. The show inspired J to get into metal detecting, and she showed me some of her finds and told me some fascinating stories, especially about the use of waste woollen fabrics (or "shoddy") as fertiliser on fields, which means that metal that had been part of the fabrics' previous lives gets found in fields. In one of the later episodes, Lance finds part of a stair-rod (for keeping carpet in place) and comments that there must once have been a set of stairs at that location; his friend Andy just nods while looking slightly sceptical, but we know that it probably got there from poorly-sorted shoddy.
During the drive to J's village in the morning, I mentioned that I'd had a drink with Liz Williams in Glastonbury the previous evening, and J was astounded, as she knew Liz from their days at Manchester University, where they had co-founded the SF club. They'd lost touch, though J had been aware that Liz had moved to the area. This was such a huge coincidence that at first I had some doubts that this was the same Liz Williams. The first websites that I found mentioned that Liz had done a PhD at Cambridge but said nothing about her undergraduate education, but then J found her photo albums from university days and yes, that did look like Liz, and then finally I did some intelligent searching and found that she had indeed attended Manchester - and so that evening I felt entirely confident about sending Liz a message about the coincidence. She remembers J well, and asked for her contact details. Amazing!
My hotel in Shepton Mallet was a very large family house that had been converted into a B&B with a pub-style restaurant. It was friendly, and my cottage pie was delicious. The heating wasn't on as the cold snap had taken them by surprise, but they very cheerfully supplied me with a fan-heater and I was comfortable.
See photos from Friday
Saturday in Frome (pronounced "Froom")
I was staying in the George Hotel in the centre of Frome, and Mike and Ellie dropped me off there at 10.30. Check-in was from 3 pm, and this time there was little chance of getting in early as they'd been full the night before and had a lot of cleaning to do.
I decided to start off by locating the railway station, getting there via the scenic route along the river that my Frome itinerary recommended. I got slightly distracted at the start of this process by spotting the Cheese and Grain event space that marks the end of the East Mendip Way, and then by the market that was set up in the car park near the Cheese and Grain. The young man who had made me the grilled cheese sandwich in Wells had recommended a vintage cheddar called 1833 (which I see from the website is made in Shepton Mallet), and the cheese stall stocked it, so I bought a pack. It turned out not to be as intense as I was expecting, but it was an exceptionally well-rounded taste and I will look out for more.
As I was about to head off along the river I checked google maps and noticed that it showed a cinema just around the corner from the hotel that had Bill and Ted Face the Music starting at 11.15, with the next performance around 1 pm. I decided to stick with the railway plan and go to the cinema after lunch. It was about 20 minutes to the station along the river (with inadequate signage in the section from the river to the station), and less than 10 back to town along the main road. This took me in sight of the cinema so I went in to buy at ticket for the afternoon performance, and found that the 11.15 showing was still on the board, showing 39 seats available whereas 1 pm had only 4 available - making it far too crowded for comfort. The film had already started though I think I only missed about 5 minutes and I don't think any of those were crucial to the plot since I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway. It is charming.
I had lunch in the George and then read for a while in the residents' lounge. Around 2.30 the man on reception offered to check if my room was ready and it was, so I finally got to meet the four-poster bed I'd booked a year earlier. The George only has one room with a four-poster and usually such rooms are significantly more expensive that standard rooms, so when I found out that the George only wanted an extra £25, I asked for that upgrade. It turned out to be even better than in the photos, and the room also had a very comfortable armchair and functioning heating, so I read, and drank tea, and looked out at the rain while my clothes were drying (because it had been raining all of this time).
At around 4 pm I decided to head out into the rain to check out the independent cafes and craftware shops that my cheese-grilling friend had mentioned. These are concentrated in an area called "Saint Catherine's" that occupies a few blocks uphill of the George and they also looked charming, but again more crowded than I'm currently comfortable with. So back home for more reading, and then a light dinner downstairs on a couple of tapas dishes. I'd been reading the 1995 SF novel Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley which a friend had passed onto me years ago; it had some good ideas, but each of the three parts involved multiple groups in conflict and conspiracy, and I could never detect him even attempting to explain what crucial characteristics and motivations these groups had, so it was a lot of breathless rushing about, repeated three times. Such a relief to get to the end and throw it in the bin.
For Sunday breakfast, I'd booked the earliest slot, for 8 am, and I had the dining room to myself for the first half hour. I had smoked salmon and scrambled eggs - my one and only chance to order it on this trip - and found myself with time to catch the first London train of the day, at 9.40. Frome is only about an hour and a half from London, so I was home before midday. It was raining in both places.
See photos from Frome
There are many worse places than Wells, Shepton Mallet and Frome to spend a rainy day during a pandemic, and I'm very much looking forward to returning in better conditions to complete my walk of the Mendip Way. I might even treat myself to a weekend in Frome just to see the Frome Independent, when that's running again. I will endeavour, the next time I report on the area, to find an alternative to "charming" as I see I have already used my ration for this century.
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By Wednesday, a rainy Friday seemed sufficiently assured that I suggested we forget about the gardens. I was still planning to walk to Shepton Mallet (as I regularly walk 6 Easy miles in the rain in my morning walks), but I didn't want to risk hanging out in the rain waiting for check-in, so arranged with J that I would let her know when I was approaching town, and she would be waiting to pick me up. She also offered to pick me up at any point on the route at which I might decide to bail out. However, after my walk to Glastonbury on the Thursday, with the views from the tor of my whole walking route, I felt I'd walked a route that was complete in itself, and I didn't owe it to myself or the East Mendip Way to walk any part of it. As another friend said, "You're on holiday, not at boot camp." So we arranged that J would pick me up near my Wells hotel at the 10.30 check-out time on Friday, and we'd spend the day hanging out at her new home on an actual Somerset farm. J was also happy to drive me to Frome on the Saturday, but I decided to take the luggage transfer people up on their offer of a lift; it turned out that the phone number given under "Luggage Transfer" on my itinerary was the main office number rather than their mobile number and I just got the machine when I called on Thursday evening, so I wrote a large message on the back of Thursday's itinerary asking them to call me, and lashed it to my backpack in a highly visible location using my bungee-cord washing line. They got in touch with me before lunch on Friday, and we arranged another check-out-time pickup.
Friday in the vicinity of Shepton Mallet
It was raining when J arrived, and continued raining on and off all day. Fortunately J's new home is very cosy - unlike her previous home in the same village - and it was a lovely place to spend a rainy day. She had moved in just a few days before, so it was quite exciting being one of her first visitors. The main moving day had been planned for the Wednesday, but fortunately she was able to adjust around the weather forecast and bring it forward to Tuesday. We chatted about the Bishop of Bath and Wells, watched the cows coming in for milking, lunched on a delicious traybake that J made of chicken with rice and cherry tomatoes with a spicy peanut sauce, and watched the first 5 episodes of detectorists.
Some friends had strongly recommended detectorists when it first came out, and I'd watched the first few episodes when it was first on TV; I could see its charm, but I found Lance's continuing attachment to his ex-wife sufficiently painful that I'd never got up the motivation to watch more, no matter how the recommendations were piling up. On second viewing, I found I could cope even with his serenading her at the pub open mike, and by the time I had to leave for dinner at the hotel, I was a firm convert. I watched the rest of the episodes as soon as I got home, finding the last episode gloriously satisfying, and I am sure I will watch them again many times. The show inspired J to get into metal detecting, and she showed me some of her finds and told me some fascinating stories, especially about the use of waste woollen fabrics (or "shoddy") as fertiliser on fields, which means that metal that had been part of the fabrics' previous lives gets found in fields. In one of the later episodes, Lance finds part of a stair-rod (for keeping carpet in place) and comments that there must once have been a set of stairs at that location; his friend Andy just nods while looking slightly sceptical, but we know that it probably got there from poorly-sorted shoddy.
During the drive to J's village in the morning, I mentioned that I'd had a drink with Liz Williams in Glastonbury the previous evening, and J was astounded, as she knew Liz from their days at Manchester University, where they had co-founded the SF club. They'd lost touch, though J had been aware that Liz had moved to the area. This was such a huge coincidence that at first I had some doubts that this was the same Liz Williams. The first websites that I found mentioned that Liz had done a PhD at Cambridge but said nothing about her undergraduate education, but then J found her photo albums from university days and yes, that did look like Liz, and then finally I did some intelligent searching and found that she had indeed attended Manchester - and so that evening I felt entirely confident about sending Liz a message about the coincidence. She remembers J well, and asked for her contact details. Amazing!
My hotel in Shepton Mallet was a very large family house that had been converted into a B&B with a pub-style restaurant. It was friendly, and my cottage pie was delicious. The heating wasn't on as the cold snap had taken them by surprise, but they very cheerfully supplied me with a fan-heater and I was comfortable.
See photos from Friday
Saturday in Frome (pronounced "Froom")
I was staying in the George Hotel in the centre of Frome, and Mike and Ellie dropped me off there at 10.30. Check-in was from 3 pm, and this time there was little chance of getting in early as they'd been full the night before and had a lot of cleaning to do.
I decided to start off by locating the railway station, getting there via the scenic route along the river that my Frome itinerary recommended. I got slightly distracted at the start of this process by spotting the Cheese and Grain event space that marks the end of the East Mendip Way, and then by the market that was set up in the car park near the Cheese and Grain. The young man who had made me the grilled cheese sandwich in Wells had recommended a vintage cheddar called 1833 (which I see from the website is made in Shepton Mallet), and the cheese stall stocked it, so I bought a pack. It turned out not to be as intense as I was expecting, but it was an exceptionally well-rounded taste and I will look out for more.
As I was about to head off along the river I checked google maps and noticed that it showed a cinema just around the corner from the hotel that had Bill and Ted Face the Music starting at 11.15, with the next performance around 1 pm. I decided to stick with the railway plan and go to the cinema after lunch. It was about 20 minutes to the station along the river (with inadequate signage in the section from the river to the station), and less than 10 back to town along the main road. This took me in sight of the cinema so I went in to buy at ticket for the afternoon performance, and found that the 11.15 showing was still on the board, showing 39 seats available whereas 1 pm had only 4 available - making it far too crowded for comfort. The film had already started though I think I only missed about 5 minutes and I don't think any of those were crucial to the plot since I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway. It is charming.
I had lunch in the George and then read for a while in the residents' lounge. Around 2.30 the man on reception offered to check if my room was ready and it was, so I finally got to meet the four-poster bed I'd booked a year earlier. The George only has one room with a four-poster and usually such rooms are significantly more expensive that standard rooms, so when I found out that the George only wanted an extra £25, I asked for that upgrade. It turned out to be even better than in the photos, and the room also had a very comfortable armchair and functioning heating, so I read, and drank tea, and looked out at the rain while my clothes were drying (because it had been raining all of this time).
At around 4 pm I decided to head out into the rain to check out the independent cafes and craftware shops that my cheese-grilling friend had mentioned. These are concentrated in an area called "Saint Catherine's" that occupies a few blocks uphill of the George and they also looked charming, but again more crowded than I'm currently comfortable with. So back home for more reading, and then a light dinner downstairs on a couple of tapas dishes. I'd been reading the 1995 SF novel Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley which a friend had passed onto me years ago; it had some good ideas, but each of the three parts involved multiple groups in conflict and conspiracy, and I could never detect him even attempting to explain what crucial characteristics and motivations these groups had, so it was a lot of breathless rushing about, repeated three times. Such a relief to get to the end and throw it in the bin.
For Sunday breakfast, I'd booked the earliest slot, for 8 am, and I had the dining room to myself for the first half hour. I had smoked salmon and scrambled eggs - my one and only chance to order it on this trip - and found myself with time to catch the first London train of the day, at 9.40. Frome is only about an hour and a half from London, so I was home before midday. It was raining in both places.
See photos from Frome
There are many worse places than Wells, Shepton Mallet and Frome to spend a rainy day during a pandemic, and I'm very much looking forward to returning in better conditions to complete my walk of the Mendip Way. I might even treat myself to a weekend in Frome just to see the Frome Independent, when that's running again. I will endeavour, the next time I report on the area, to find an alternative to "charming" as I see I have already used my ration for this century.
This entry was originally posted at https://helenraven.dreamwidth.org/488884.html. Please comment there using OpenID.