A cold North Somerset wind blew like a trumpet across the Mendip Hills as we set out from Chelynch. First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window
It’s all farming country round here. A couple of porkers came snuffling to the gate at Newman Street Farm, and a bunch of peahens fled down the lane, their speckly grey and white bodies bent forward as they scurried between the hedges like plump little old ladies heading for a bring-and-buy.
We crossed the fields by way of proper Mendip stone stiles, big slabs of limestone a farmer can hop over but a sheep can’t. Three Ashes Lane took us west in a tunnel of trees where fallen crab apples littered the trackway, already rotting from blotchy green to soft toffee browns and blacks.
At a dip in the lane stood a mighty cast-iron contraption, all bolts and cogs and great spoked wheels. ‘It’s an early kind of cultivator,’ explained its owner, emerging from a shed under the hazels. ‘You’d have a steam traction engine at either side of the field, hauling this thing from one to the other and back again on a rope as it ploughed the soil.’ How cumbersome such a monster looked to our modern eyes; but how our forefathers must have blessed its power, its capacity to spare them sore bones and wrenched muscles, back in the dawn of mechanised agriculture.
At a junction of lanes we turned south down the Fosse Way. The military highway where Roman soldiers marched and grumbled is now a beautiful leafy lane, cutting across the grain of the Somerset landscape. In Beacon Hill Wood we veered away from the old road and up through a giant’s graveyard of fallen beech boughs to where a standing stone rose at the apex of the hill, already ancient when the legionaries marched by.
Near Shepton Mallet the graceful curve of the Charlton Viaduct, pierced by 27 arches, carried the trackbed of the long-defunct Somerset & Dorset Railway across the infant River Sheppey. Walking back over Ingsdons Hill to Chelynch I thought of the miserable journeys I’d endured along that line, sulking back to school after the holidays – and the joys of watching the clots of steam float by the window as the S&D wafted me home at each term’s end. Happiest days of my life? Well – some of them were.
Start & finish: Poacher’s Pocket PH, Chelynch, Shepton Mallet, Somerset BA4 4PY (OS ref ST 649439)
Getting there: A37 (Bristol) or A367 (Bath) towards Shepton Mallet. 200 m after they merge (2 miles from Shepton Mallet), left at top of Long Hill (signed ‘Wagon & Horses’) along Old Frome Road. In 1¼ miles, right at Wagon & Horses PH (signed ‘Doulting’) to Poacher’s Pocket PH in Chelynch.
Walk (6½ miles, easy/moderate, OS Explorer 142. NB – Online map, more walks: www.christophersomerville.co.uk): From Poacher’s Pocket, left; pass top of King’s Road; in 20 m, left over stile (fingerpost). Across field and next stile; path across field to corner of hedge (649443); right over stone stile. Cross field to Newman Street farm lane (652444); left to T-junction (648450). Right to first crossroads (649455); right to cross Old Frome Road (652455; fast! take care!); through gateway opposite and on (yellow arrow/YA). Through hedge by 2 tall trees; keep same line to cross stone stile (654458; YA). Left with hedge on left; over stile; through narrow woodland strip; over stile. Diagonally right through 3 fields (stiles). In 4th field, left over stile (657462); down to gate into Three Ashes Lane (658464). YA points ahead, but turn left along lane. In ⅓ mile, cross road (652464) and on along lane. In 200 m lane curves left, then right (650464); ignore both gates here, and continue along lane, then same direction along field edges for ⅔ mile to T-junction with Fosse Way (639466). Left to cross Old Frome Road (638461; take care!). Left for 70 m, then right through Beacon Hill Wood; continue along Fosse Way to road (636451). Left to T-junction; right; in 200 m, left (635449) along Fosse Way for nearly 1 mile. Pass barn on right (632437); in 200 m, left up steps, over stone stile (631435; green arrow, East Mendip Way/EMW). Cross field, then Bodden Lane (634436); on up Ingsdons Hill (EMW). At summit (638437), ahead along EMW for ⅔ mile to road (647439); right into Chelynch.
NB: Click on Facebook “Like” link to share this walk with Facebook friends.
Lunch: Poacher’s Pocket Inn, Chelynch (01749-880220) – good food and friendly atmosphere
More info: Shepton Mallet TIC (01749-345258); visitsomerset.co.uk
www.ramblers.org.uk www.satmap.com www.LogMyTrip.co.uk