A heartwarming reunion

/ Dee and Steve

Monday 19th February 2024

Watchet to Minehead – 8 miles

Today was so special meeting up with these lovely people. Our walk was taking us through Blue Anchor Bay – in July 2017 we stayed there, at the Langbury Hotel for a couple of nights, before nervously starting off on our retirement project of walking the UK Coastline. Nigel and Paula were our wonderful hosts. So we couldn’t just walk by without seeing if they were still there and letting them know that we were still rambling. Imagine our surprise when they greeted us so warmly, remembering who we were as they’d been following our adventures through the blog. That is why I say ‘heartwarming’ in the title because it warmed our hearts that they had done that. We had a fabulous hour exchanging our stories – Nigel and Paula too are great travellers and wildlife photographers. https://www.langbury.co.uk/ They now run their stunning residence as self-catering accommodation – if you’re down this way, we would highly recommend.

The day started off with the most wonderful breakfast, served up by Keith, the owner of this fabulous hotel we’re staying in – http://the-georgian-house.somersethotels24.com/en/ Watchet is great, the hotel is great – life is good.

The sumptuous dining room where we enjoy breakfast.

We’d been pre-informed that there was a diversion off the Coastal Path as you leave Watchet – we just needed to follow the yellow signs. This was really helpful although we still got a little lost … we diverted off the diversion somehow!! But once we were back on it again the path was fairly straightforward, largely walking through woodland but with coastal views too. A fair amount of uphill, a fair amount of mud and water and this meant a fair amount of slippery downhill slopes – I took it very slow, I mean literally inching my way down, I must have looked ridiculous!!

An excellent bar we’ve found in Watchet

There are lots of these little men around in Watchet – possibly connected to the Arty community here and the town’s history of tin mining

Nothing like walking through muddy puddles – wet feet again!!

Half way along the route we reached Blue Anchor Bay – a place that holds fond memories for us and where we enjoyed our meet up with Nigel and Paula.

Blue Anchor Bay

And then on to Minehead via Dunster Beach. A gloriously flat walk, quite a lot of water around but plenty of chances to divert and stay dry. The white peaks of Butlins loomed ahead as we entered the town but if felt good to be walking along the promenade again. It was amazing looking up at the hill where our walking first started – how it didn’t put us off I’ll never know.

I guess we should have saved this bit to the very end but it’s just seemed silly not to do it while we were down this way. We reckon we have ‘rambled’ 2/3 of England and Wales now – we still have bits and pieces to do here and there. Scotland is probably out of the question now – we may do that in a different style of transport.

Looking back on our very first climb!!

The white peaks of Butlins

The very start of the South West Coastal Path – on Minehead promenade.

But today’s meet up with Nigel and Paula summed up the beauty of creating memories – we all said what fabulously interesting people we had met on our journeys and how they had enriched our lives … and there’s always room for more.

And this is a link to the blog where our rambling days started:

https://wordpress.com/post/deestevetravels.blog/71

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