We did some good walks with Vera in between sorting haircuts, nails, brows, dental hygienist and a second vaccine jab for Hilary at Minehead hospital. We did the high circuit in St Audries Deer Park and saw deer on the skyline on our way up to Bicknoller Post and the ascent of Beacon Hill. Cranes were working on Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in the distance.
The West Somerset Mineral Railway Company was incorporated in 1855 to exploit the 19th Century iron rush, mining buried ore in the Brendon Hills on Exmoor and transporting it along the Mineral Line to South Wales. The ore was carried down the Mineral Line railway to the port at Watchet where it was shipped to South Wales for smelting.
We started one walk at the remains of the Incline, a cable operated section of the West Somerset Mineral Railway and the ruins of the cable winding house. The incline survives as a combination of embanked earthwork and cutting. In two places the trackbed is supported across gaps by stone bridges known as underbridges and crosses over several culverted watercourses.
We walked down the Mineral Line into Roadwater, where it became a single track tarmacked road and we had a latte coffee in the Post Office stores there. Sadly the Valiant Soldier pub was closed. We continued passed Cleeve Abbey and on to Washford which usually has steam trains running through its station on the West Somerset Railway, but not at the moment.
Founded over 800 years ago, Cleeve Abbey in Somerset housed a community of Cistercian monks for almost 350 years. At its peak it was home to 28 monks. The whole monastery was complete by the late 13th century, and some 200 years later the monks lavished funds on renovating the cloister buildings and creating a magnificent new dining hall.
After the abbey’s suppression in 1536 the church was destroyed, but the cloister survived virtually intact. Today Cleeve has some of the best-preserved monastic buildings in England, with many rooms retaining traces of their original decoration
On Wednesday 12th May we headed back to Castle Marina in Nottingham. We were grateful to Annie and Ian for driving us there and back in his and her Ford Focus’s (Focii?). We stopped for monster sausage rolls at Gloucester Services on the M5. Vera enjoyed running around in the designated Dog Walk area at the Services, see below!
Gloucester on the M5 and Tebay Services Farmshop and Kitchens on the M6 are an example of how motorway services have progressed in recent years.
While we were away the marina had called to say that the bilge pump on The Duke kept coming on and pumping oily water into the marina. Even when we were not on it The Duke managed to cause us problems! An engineer managed to tighten up the nuts on the stern gland flange while we were away and stopped canal water leaking in to activate the bilge pump. The water in the bilge was contaminated with leaked engine coolant, 50% antifreeze and this was causing the rainbow iridescence on the marina water.
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