COMBWICH to BRIDGWATER
Sunday 9th March 2025
Today miles: 12.3 Total miles: 2475.5
I must admit that I was little bit nervous last night about sleeping in the open air without a tent, it turned out to be an interesting and thankfully, a rodent free experience. I packed away quickly under an ascending orange sun and carried on along the excellent path through the wildlife reserve. Pretty quickly after setting off I once again joined the River Parrett Trail. I strolled easily and quickly along the sea wall and into the small village of Combwich. By now I was desperate for a visit to the toilet and was disappointed to find there’s no functioning facilities. A few minutes later I fortunately got talking to a really kind man who allowed me to use his toilet and then even offered to make me a coffee despite him already running late, taking his daughter to play mini rugby. The sea wall between the river and the arable land was easy to walk along and it was a nice change to be walking along a flat path. Sadly long sections of the path were churned up by tyre tracks and this made walking along these areas more problematic and I had to be careful not to twist an ankle.
It’s a perfectly flat four miles around the sea wall. The only company that I had was a man driving a Land Rover. I want to say that he’s walking his dog but he’s just driving slowly around the track whilst the dog is running behind. Ten minutes after he originally passed by I saw him again going in the opposite direction, we waved towards each other as he went by. On arriving on the Northern edge of Bridgwater I find the path is fenced off. There constructing additional flood defences on the river and there’s a short diversion in place. It’s a short and easy to follow diversion and as an added bonus the diversion takes me past a Subway sandwich shop and Starbucks. I sat and ate my Spicy Italian as the traffic rumbled by.
It was a noisy walk up the side of the busy single carriageway. After two further miles I stopped walking outside the McDonalds restaurant at Dunball and soon after jumped on board the bus back to Bridgwater. I’m booked into a Premier Inn tonight and a warm, comfortable bed. There’s a retail park close to the hotel so I grabbed a couple of beers (4) and something for dinner. I spent the rest of the night doing simple chores and watching TV. I probably should have and could have pushed on for another ten miles. The weather was perfect for walking and there was plenty of daylight remaining. I felt like I could have carried but because of a lack of suitable accommodation in early March I was forced to take off my pack much earlier than I wanted.
Werewolfandflump UK Coast Path 