Day 32 Bristol

Today marks the end of the first section of the walk. Four weeks ago Bristol seemed a long way away. Which of course it was, being nearly three hundred miles away. (Cornwall is a very long county.)

The first task for today was to find some breakfast. We had a pre-breakfast snack to keep us going. Yoghurt x2 and a banana for Sue, and half a flapjack and a banana for me. Does that not count as breakfast I hear you ask? Particularly as it was washed down by two cups of tea, PG Tips for Sue and herbal for me. Absolutely not. We need a lot more than that, even for a rather short day.

Off we went, hoping for a village shop. This time, there was one. Winford Community Village Shop. We bought lunch, snacks and hot drinks and sat outside to eat our second breakfast. It was a slightly eccentric meal – bread spread with hummus and salami – but it hit the spot.

Naturally our path led uphill. Up and up the road we went. We had some footpaths later that were vital, by which I mean the alternative would be a lot longer and involve A roads, so we thought we’d reserve our footpath energy in case they were tricky.

There was a route problem today. It turned out there was a new A-road right along part of the route of the Community Forest path. Definitely not on my map. Fortunately it was on my phone and it looked like the footpath still existed. We ploughed through fairly reasonable footpaths. The wild flower meadows (no sign of a path but at least no barriers and no cows) were lovely, albeit waist high in places.

The Forest Path worked well. There were a few worrying moments where we thought we might have to cross the fairly busy A-road, but the path dived down along the side and ultimately to a subway

By now we could see Bristol, and thoughts of a cafe pushed us on. We barely stopped to admire the village of Long Ashton

The cafe was in the Ashton Court estate, just before the Clifton Bridge. We marched briskly through the park, admiring garden sculpture along the way. There was a nasty, heart-sinking moment when we saw a woman sitting on a bench drinking from a flask, was the cafe shut? We stopped, ostensibly to chat, but in reality to ascertain the cafe status. Just round the corner said the woman.

We made it. We could tell we were now in a metropolitan area- I had a kimchi and cheese sourdough toastie and Sue had avocado on toast (sourdough of course ). We sank into our seats, ordered our food and tucked in, knowing that we were only a mile from the Suspension Bridge, and the end of the rather short day.

We had had a good morning, everywhere to the east of us had had heavy rain, but we had stayed dry. Matthew was coming to pick us up-dropping Sue off at the station, and taking me home for a few days R and R. Mainly just R. That’s the sitting down with feet up R, not the wild partying R. We walked over the bridge and headed for the car.