ZummerZet!!

Got to love the west Country, its landscape, its people and their laid back way of life. But not their traffic and driving though...

Better LARGE

Started in Dorset, at Gillingham (first train), no buses anywhere at that point, so it was an enforced walk up to the Wiltshire border, by avoiding main roads, I walked along the Stour Valley Path, which of course meandered way off the 'as the crow flies', adding greatly to the estimated 5 mile walking distance.

I had to include, in the extras, this distinctive old fashioned signpost, straight out of a 1950's Automobile Association guide. As I snapped it, in the still, then, dull weather, a chap moving "stuff" quipped 'like our signpost, do you?'. "We'll get it fixed. One day." Thus demonstrating this way of doing things tomorrow, if they don't need doing today.

Zeals.Anywhere real, with a name beginning with a zed is always going to be interesting. After passing underneath the giguntum road artery that is the A303, Zeals and its distinctive church (NOT this blip) provided some photographic interest but other than that, not a great deal else. I did see a bus timetable that went west to Wincanton, somewhere I'd not been before.

Wincanton

Known for its racecourse, this hilly and mostly quite pretty market town (mentioned in Domesday Book) had a great mixture of characterful buildings, traffic, parked traffic, moving traffic and static traffic, as well as beeping horn traffic. And tractors, doing all the above. And this ALL after that huge A303 bypassing the place!

Everybody said hello. I think that even those lazing creamy milk-yielding cows in the wonderfully undulating and pretty countryside out on the walk undertaken sort of said hello, too. Views over the Blackmoor Vale and then, whilst I was there, had to walk up to the Racecourse, on yet another hill. However, unlike Salisbury's, you can't walk beyond the fenced outer perimeter but I had to investigate whilst I was in the locality.

A footpath completely overgrown by knee-high oxeye daises, buttercups and every other meadow flower was traversed on my way back down, over the disused railway track and back up the hill again. Cup of takeaway tea from a young lady whose discussions included the fact that there are no nightclubs in Wincanton. And about the all the notices put up everywhere about how the Police and authorities are helming in on one main scurrilous fugitive - YES, someone is allowing their dog to mess....  

My Blip though is of Wincanton's main St Peter and St Paul's church, which, oddly, is down in the bottom of the town - and not the top. Took quite a few interiors but as the sun eventually peeped out, this ultrawide looking towards the sun provided an opportunity for yet another mono conversion. As the stonework was in shadow and of quite a flat muddy brown colour, I had to separately 'treat' that area, to enhance it.

Bussed it back to Templecombe, to get the return train home, at 6pm. 

SO tired was I, it was straight to bed - and so I completely missed Salisbury's Magna Carta one-off community Parade, which will never happen again. Oh well, perhaps I should take a Somerset look upon it all.