Saturday 05th June 1999 - Day One, Newbury - Taunton - Minehead - Porlock. Next

I was at Newbury station in time for getting my ticket and train at a quarter past nine. This time I was doing the first bit of the coast path, Minehead to Barnstaple. This part of the journey is becoming routine now, only this time I am getting off at Taunton, taking the 28A bus to a place called Bishops Lydeard and then taking a steam train ride on the West Somerset Railway to Minehead.

I was a bit concerned about the weather, it had been very wet with four thunder storms in the previous fortnight. The weather forcasts had shown a low pressure system with a big swirl of cloud coming down from Eire to the West Country. The forecast was for rain in the next couple of days.

It was a beautiful sunny morning with a few fluffy clouds to start. As the train headed west the skys darkened and it rained a couple of times. At Taunton I got off the train and found the bus stop around the corner. The next bus was in half an hour at ten past eleven. Back on the platform I watched a couple of trains, and walking backwards and forwards, notebook in hand was a traditional train spotter, anorack and all. In the information centre I was able to get timetables for the bus service and the train for Barnstaple amongst the other interesting leaflets such as 'Barometer World' and 'Hedgehog Hospital'.

Back at the bus stop a 'family from hell' were waiting to board the bus, dad with walking stick, mum with shopping, and about half a dozen siblings of various ages with one or two bags each. Dad shouted at each of them in turn, they shouted at each other then back at dad, and mum kept quiet. A normal Saturday for them I guess.

The young lad driving the bus wasn't stopping at the railway but would let me know when we got to the nearest stop. The bus clattered out of Taunton and along the country 'A' roads to Bishops Lydeard. At the far side of the village I disembarked and walked a few hundred yards through a subway to the station of the West Somerset Railway. As I emerged from the subway I heard the peep of a steam whistle and the puff of a train. It also started to rain.

Standing at the well maintained platform was the train. I looked in the shop, bought a ticket at the ticket office and moved a wheelchair so I could sit down on a bench. There was a general bustle of activity with a group of OAP's in the tea shop, and a troupe of Brownies walking past. After a while the rain eased and I took a couple of pictures of the engine, then walked back to the shop to congratulate them on their Internet site - they had at least one more passenger that day because of it.

I boarded the train and after about ten minutes with a clang and a jolt it left, starting slowly up a slight incline. Gently it chuffed through the Somerset countryside going very slowly up one incline for over half a mile because it had two extra coaches and the track was wet. The rain ran down the windows which steamed up. Some stations we stopped at, and others which were request stop we went straight through. At Williton I saw the sea and the train ran along side it. A small boat yard had a shed with the following lines from the 'Rhyme of the ancient mariner' written on the side:

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, the furrow followed free.

At Watchet the weather was really miserable as people who huddled on the platform in anoracks and cagoules under umbrellas but shortly afterwards it brightened and some warmth came through the window as the train picked up speed. The guard who introduced himself as Dave trotted through advising passengers that the train was running approximately 17 minutes late and was arriving at Blue Anchor. Shortly after Blue Anchor was Minehead.

It was still raining at Minehead so I fished out my cagoule, put that on me and a dustbin liner over the top of the rucksack. At that moment a shaft of sunlight illuminated the station, but not for long. Looking out I could see North Hill. I crossed the road to the sea wall and in one direction was Butlins dominated by a large multipointed marquee structure, and in the other direction a sign stating the 'start of the South West Coast Path to Poole (Dorset) 600 miles'.

I took a picture and at 14:16 walked up between the houses. Such was my elation at starting this great path that at 14:16 and thirty seconds I nearly missed the first turning right.

At the beginning the path zig zags back and forth. Halfway up a bedraggled rain soaked robin looked at me expectantly; if I had a crumb to hand I would have given it to him. The path then puts you at a five way junction without saying which way you should go. Maybe I missed a turn earlier on, but of the possibilities I chose the right one and eventually found a confirming sign. The path which was really an unmetalled road continued up and up through the woods then eventually out onto open moorland. Not once did the path stop climbing. Not once did it stop raining. Little rivulets of water were running down and it was quite muddy in places.

A couple of path junctions were clearly labelled and I splashed on, then I was aware of more splashing. I was being followed by two riders on horses. We exchanged a quick word about the weather as they went one way and I went the other. Here the path was under an inch or two of water and I was very glad of my new walking boots. Through a couple of gates was the real Exmoor with heather and gorse. There was one set of farm buildings and fields of sheep. On I walked through varying depths of water and mud being eternally grateful to my wife for pushing me into buying a proper pair of walking boots at the New Forest Show last year.

A little further on I caught my first sight of Porlock nestling down in the bay. I was so high that I was at eye level with little clouds drifting down the valley. 'Should take me an hour to get there', I thought. Three walkers with about twenty yards between each of them came the other way. The middle one asked me how far Minehead was and how easy the journey. I thought four miles and flat then down down down - but wet.

A little further on was a sign and here I made a mistake. The sign pointed down the valley, but there was a much more likely path which forked left and I took it. Around the hill it went that ended in woodland. I took a picture as I went round and in the wood I saw a deer, but I wasn't convinced I was going the right way and shortly after a sign confirmed the fact because there was no mention of the coast path, so I retraced my footsteps. I think I wasted about an hour and two miles doing that.

Some day I want to be able to say that I have walked every inch of the South West Way (with 613 miles that works out at roughly 38,839,680 of them), so I made sure that I retraced every bit and didn't shortcut down. The descent down was long and steep. My legs started to hurt, and I was cold, wet and hungry. When walking hunger doesn't go away and needed to be addressed before I was in trouble. At the bottom was a bench and as it had stopped raining temporarily I set up the Trangia cooker and had pasta in mushroom sauce (soup). You boil the pasta up first then add the soup and let that warm up. It's dead easy to make, tastes as though it is sent from heaven and gives you loads of energy. After that I studied the map.

I had covered just over half the distance I wanted to, but there was a campsite in Porlock about one and a half miles further on. I decided not to overdo it on the first day which has been my undoing in the past, and stay at the campsite. Once I had made this decision I felt happy with it and much better. The path went onto another unmetalled road which had houses and hill on one side, and a woody hedge and sheep fields on the other. Soon it turned left to go alongside a very swollen brown water stream that was dealing with a lot more water than it was used to.

Over a bridge I entered Bossington, a pretty village despite the rain. I followed a couple of signs then came to one which diverted from the original coast path. Along Porlock bay there is a shingle ridge, but this has recently been breached resulting in a break and flooding the land behind. It also means you cannot cross it with a tide greater than six meters. As I didn't know the state of the tide and it was an official diversion I took it. The path followed a public footpath between high hedges and wading through some squashy grass and muddy bits. Then it turned inland and into Porlock. After a couple of roads I came across the campsite I was aiming for. I walked a bit further up the street to see what was there, then returned and pitched the tent quickly as the rain came down again.

I sat shivering in the tent trying to dry out my soggy clothes a bit whilst phoning Kate to say I was at the Sparkhayes Farm Camp site, then wrote up my log. I stopped writing when the light faded at just after nine o'clock. It was then that I started to feel cold, and recognising the dangers of this I started to get my bed bits and pieces out. Unfortunately I had difficulty remembering where things were. I was shivering uncontrollably when I got out the tent into the blowing wet rain to go over to the toilet and wash my Trangia bowl, but in concilation the water was very hot. Then I had one of my rare brainwaves, fetched the empty one litre bottle and filled it with the hot water. I then stuffed this down my shirt until I was ready to change into my dry night stuff; it worked a treat in getting me a bit warmer. By ten o'clock I was asleep. I slept well considering it was my first night, only surfacing briefly a couple of times during the night before I then woke properly at just after five.

Next page, Day two, 06th June 1999, Porlock - Lynton.

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