The new country – 23 Aug, 2018
Day 19 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Bristol to Chepstow
Distance: 25km
Cumulative distance: 469km
The plan today was simple – walk to Wales! I would FINALLY, after all this time, be crossing the Bristol Channel and setting foot in a new country which would mark the first significant amount of progress. I know I’ve whinged a bit to this point about the need to head inland to cross rivers (the Camel, and the Parrett to name a couple of offenders), but the Bristol Channel is like the mother of them all. I’d first spied Wales after I rounded Hartland Point and wandered along the north Devon coast to Clovelly. It was waaay off in the distance at that point, and a little bit deceiving given there was so much ground that needed to be covered before I could even think about bridging that gap. It’s more than 50km at its widest point but ultimately I’d need to get across it if I was to take my chosen path up through Wales, and today was finally the day.
First up I did a bit of shopping up towards Clifton, passing the infamous night club Mbargo on my way up the hill. I found myself here with Collo and Vish one night last year after a Women’s World Cup game and shan’t be furnishing you all with further details. This time I didn’t stop in, I was keen to break the back of Bristol realising this would probably be one of the more uninspiring days I’d have ahead of me. I did my shopping, had brekky in a café then headed through the suburbs getting closer and closer to the River Severn which stood between myself and Wales. I went through Stoke Bishop, Sea Mills and past Shirehampton before I ended up in a very industrial area on the edge of town. I walked on a road for a while and saw a memorial site on a grassy bank nearby for a young fella who had died six years ago at just 20 years of age. The floral tributes were plentiful.
Eventually I was able to turn off road, and pick up a path which ran parallel but far enough away from the traffic that it wasn’t too noisy. Pretty decent blackberries in this section, I noted. I went past a power plant, came back onto the road then went through Severn Beach which seemed a pretty dead town. Up alongside the river I found the Severn Way, which followed the river upstream and underneath the first of two massive bridges spanning the Channel between England and Wales. I strolled under the first and started motoring towards the second given it was pretty easy walking. My calf seemed pretty good this morning, and my little toe wasn’t actually giving me too much grief despite the amount of skin it was missing. I ate up these miles which weren’t overly inspiring to be fair. There was no sand up the river banks, only a stack of mud flats and it all looked a bit grim under the overcast sky, but the bridge was drawing closer and closer so my spirits were lifting with every step. I came to a road and noticed a heap of cars were parked. Their owners were all out picking blackberries which I found to be utterly bizarre. It wasn’t a bad stretch for them but I’d seen so many better stretches since setting out from Cornwall, one of them being only five or six miles back in the direction that I’d come. It was the first time I’d seen a stack of folk all picking blackberries in the same concentrated area. There are so many blackberry bushes over here, it was a bit like watching people at the beach collecting sand. Anyway, I left them to it and pushed on up past Aust and onto the bridge.
Finally! I could almost taste Wales off in the distance. But this bridge was loooooong, and it was freakin windy up there. I stuck my head down and tried to cross its jarring concrete footpath as quickly as possible. To my left I could see the other bridge but Bristol was well obscured. To my right were the hills of Wales which looked absolutely beautiful, even in the grey light I’d been subjected to most of the day. I went on and on and on, completing the length of the first span, and then the second, and then finally the River Severn ended and the bridge was crossing over land again. But wait, there was still more to come! Another river about half a kilometre in the distance still stood between me and Wales, so I had to soldier on. Turns out this was the River Wye which would be almost a constant for me over the next three or four days of walking. It was pretty wide here at its mouth, although nothing like the Severn I’d just left behind. Once I was over the Wye I came off the bridge and immediately saw a sign which started off in Welsh, before providing the English translation. I’d made it!
I pushed on through a tunnel covered in some very patriotic street art then stopped once I emerged and had a spell. A couple of local young lads asked me a few questions about Australia, then provided me with very detailed instructions of how to get into Chepstow.
It was still a couple of kilometres away from where I was staying, and these are always the hardest of the day. It had been another long one, pounding pavement for the most part, but I pushed on through Bulwark on the outskirts then eventually came into a very pretty little town. I walked underneath an ancient archway on the high street and checked into my hostel before heading out for a pub feed and a chat with Al on the phone. I may or may not have slayed half a litre of ice cream from Tesco’s before heading off to sleep that night. Day off in Bristol tomorrow!
