My lodging for this week is like a little apartment set off from the main house, and is the first "en suite" place I've stayed at--bathroom in the room, instead of somewhere down a hall. Come to think of it, it's the first lodging that hasn't been up three flights of stairs...a welcome change after hauling my full pack for 5+ miles today. My legs are going to rival those of Hercules by the time I get done with this trip.
Dinner tonight is per force very light--an apricot Cliff bar and lapsong suchong tea, since the one pub in this hamlet is closed for the holiday and I haven't yet found the local grocer (presuming there is one...this place is pretty small). The view from my B&B window overlooks pasture and the town.
I've spent much of the day getting here by bus from the Bath train station to a spot at the edge of town called South Down, then walking about 5 miles through Englishcombe and Priston to Farmborough. Priston had a pub, where I ate a big ploughman's lunch (having also scarfed down a large traditional English breakfast at the YMCA in Bath in preparation for the walk).
I'm finding that a village, while on a map, doesn't necessarily mean anything more than a few houses. At Englishcombe, a tall gray-haired, ponytailed fellow was in the driveway of his house at a crossroads. When I asked him for directions to the village center, he grinned and said "This is it." We chatted and immediately found common ground--we're both doing the Coast to Coast walk: he in June and I in July. He had retired last year and done the entire Southwest Coast walk--all 1200 miles of it--in spates. Took him 4 months of walking.
At the Ring o' Bells pub in Priston, I met a young family from Farmborough--David, Lisa, and their daughter Amelia--who live near Tilley Farm, where I'll be on the TTEAM training this week. They'd biked down the two miles from Farmborough to take advantage of the mostly rainless, sometimes sunny, primarily fair weather today. They've invited me to dinner at the local pub, The Butchers Arms, sometime this week. We exchanged phone numbers so we can connect.
Walking the backroads of Britain offers lovely views in between miles and miles of hedgerows that are too tall to see over, even from a car. The breaks in the rows indicate either a crossroads, a gate for farm equipment to mow the fields, or an entrance to a farm or animal field.
Country roads here are very narrow, no painted lines to mark them as two lanes. They seem built wide enough for one car, yet somehow two cars are always able to pass. Even a bus and a lorry can do it...very very carefully, and not without some nasty-sounding scrapes from the flail-cut blackberry stubs in the hedgerows.
When I can't duck into a bit of a hollow on side of the road, I crush into the hedgerow to avoid getting hit. Most drivers know to be on the lookout for walkers and opposing traffic, though, and they give me lots of space.
