Walking 1000 miles from Lands end to John O'Groats in aid of The Air Ambulance (starts april 7th 2024)

Wednesday 28 April 2010

Sheperds Patch to Wainlode hill ( a magical place!)

A great day! We raised 42 pounds from complete strangers without asking once! the rollcall of honour
Sandra & heinz,the crew of the barge Flossie,Richard Bond,Dave & Jenny,Lynn,and the landlord of the red lion at wainlode who returned our camping fee of 10 pounds upon hearing what we are doing! Thank you all!.
The walk itself was along the gloucester and sharpness canal passing many odd what I assume to be canal bridge houses with Corinthian columns and a general Greek look about them,
                                                         (one of the prettier ones!)
entered gloucester and resupplied the dog food , promptly leaving town again ( I'm sure gloucester is nice just didn't get a feel for the place )
Bit confusing finding the way out as my maps are a little out of date I'm sure I didn't plan to walk along the bypass!
Finally  finding the path I met three lads with full packs about to head north along the Severn too , but left them to finish discussing the route, we opted for an inland route about 2 kilometres shorter than the Severn way, taking us over a hill with great views to the malverns and more importantly to the pub and campsite at wainlode.
setting up tent we had our second pole disaster as the main pole snapped again! Now making do with my walking pole holding the tent up, works quite well and as s new tent is being bought out by my missus at the weekend its no great problem (see pic above) .
Having repaired our shelter we sat at the front if the pub eating lamb shank (alfie got the bone) and watching an amazing sky not too sure what made the sky so great (beer maybe ?) But it kept me fascinated !

The three lads I'd met in gloucester arrived we sat supping the local ale and chatted away, as the sun finally set some cars pulled up with huge nets on they're rooves after much speculation the landlord clarified that the men where fishing for elver (young eel) which will be exported to Hong Kong!

Severn bridge to shepherds patch

As I write this blog o have a small ball of ginger fur named Alfie hogging my sleeping bag! Not sure what's wrong with his ! Cute tho .
Today we woke to a thick mist obscuring everything this made both the Severn bridges very moody (will add pics soon)

 just north of the second bridge the mist started to lift revealing to heavily laden figures walking towards us, these turned out to be mike and Jenny from an army barracks in York walking from barracks to landsend each of them were carrying about 4 stone of gear! God knows what tho!

With the mists clearing the nice FLAT landscape was revealed with views of pastural bliss ! At west end sluice we dodged the extra mile to oldbury on Severn by hopping over a 15 foot long bridge owned by the water authorities and banned for use by us normal mortals, daresay most take this route, following this was the delightfull magnox neuclear power station ,

 topped up with water at what used to be a pub bit is now an autistic kids home (forget its name tho) here we also met Maggie, Annie and Dave cooper who kindly donated ten pounds to the charity and half of Annie's tea, yep alfies charm works again!

Wandered on to the old powerstation at hamfield farm and headed inland to Berkeley for supplies ,cut a corner here and walked cross country......

 to shepperds patch where our campsite is right at the back of the Tudor pub, plaice and chips for dinner mmmn.