Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? Yes

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? Yes

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? Yes

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? Yes

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? Yes

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? Yes

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? No

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

On the second day my husband was having extreme foot pain so we attempted to hire a taxi from Shipham to Cheddar. None of the local services were helpful, and staff at the Penscot Inn explained to us that this is normal - the private taxis do not like to come at short notice for short trips. Eventually we found our way on foot to a 126 bus stop near Winscombe and took the bus to Cheddar. If our experience was typical, then it would be useful to include information about local buses - perhaps draw the bus route on the map in addition to or instead of information about taxis.

All's well that ends well, and we had a great time. Thanks for your help.

Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? Yes

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

Would you choose Encounter Walking Holidays for future holidays? Yes

Would you recommend Encounter Walking Holidays to others? Yes

We all enjoyed this walk.

Just a few comments: Baggage transfer: No problems at all, our bags were at the B&Bs when we arrived.

Accommodation: All good, although breakfast was best at the Penscot, Shipham.

Day 1: Weston to Shipham: All our GPSs showed a mile further than on the guide. Highlight was the extensive views from Crook Peak.

Day 2: Shipham to Wells: Again a mile further on GPSs. Disappointed with Cheddar Gorge as we expected to see more stunning scenery, but the tree cover was dense. Went slightly wrong, but soon sorted. Saw slow worm, ponies and the feral goats. As time was getting on, we made a slight diversion near Wookey Hole. Arrived in Wells to see the Cathedral bathed in brilliant evening sunshine.

Day 3: Pilgrim Walk: Wells to Glastonbury Tor. Lovely views from the Tor. One section of the path from East Street farm was overgrown, but no other problems. Caught the bus back to Wells.

Day 4: Wells to Frome: We knew this would be a long day, so left Wells at 8.30am. A bit drizzly to start with, but weather improved as day progressed. A few navigational problems around Shepton Mallet. The only muddy section was in Asham Wood, but the boots had dried off by the time we arrived at The George in Frome at 5.30pm, giving time to soak in the bath before going downstairs for a meal. (Again, a mile further than expected)

An enjoyable walk and many thanks to the Encounter team. The only gripe is with GWR who for some reason changed the rail timetable from Frome to Gloucester. When tickets booked, there was a direct train, but we had to change at Bristol, and then the train went via Newport to Gloucester. As we had booked seats from Gloucester, we had to leave Frome 2 hours earlier than anticipated to get our connection. The George did provide us with bacon butties to take with us, as we had to leave before breakfast.

We were perfectly happy with the communication beforehand, detailed walking notes, maps, lovely accommodation, great host and perfect luggage transfer. The trail has lots of interesting sites to visit and is a peaceful and quiet walking route even in August.

after another week in Glastobury and Bristol we ware back home now. So here is some more detailed and blunt feedback on the walk on West Mendip Way. We had a wonderful time. It was was all so well organized and worked out smoothly, so we will definitely book with you again.

Accomodation

Beachland Hotel:
super, especially great food

Webbington Hotel:
Great pool Noisy until 1am because of a wedding with band. Felt awkward in hiking clothes between dressed up and drunk wedding guests. Maybe for Saturdays another accommodation works better for hikers.

Penscot Inn
Great vegan food and big effort by the owner including nice chat. Room was suitable for our needs.

Hanam Manor:
Luxury indeed very welcoming hosts and catered very well for vegan needs.

Ebborway Farm:
Old-fashioned and rustic. Owner left a welcoming note and everything with the keys worked really well.
Breakfast was OK and very basic.

White Hart:
Located perfectly central. Room, especially the floor could have been cleaner. Good breakfast. Unfortunately trouble when checking out, because the receptionist in charge didn't believe that the night was already paid by you.

Trail
Before Shipham: Fallen signpost > should have checked the map but stupidly we didn't and missed a turn

At T-junction before Owley House we couldn't find a sign or fitting description but managed ????

All in all:
Perfect organisation of the trip! Thank you

Sorry to be slow in responding but be assured that we enjoyed our 8 day Mendip walk. All the accomodation was good and Hannam Manor in Cheddar was outstanding. The walking notes were also good with only one occasion where they led us astray. This was on the last day out of Shepton Mallet when the notes said to go straight ahead after the Poachers Pocket Inn. In fact the directions matched the road that turned hard left after the Inn. We also found the blue Mendip Way signs on this road. However, it turned out when we came to the field that we were supposed to cross that the farmer had obliterated the footpath by planting maize. The map showed a road alternative that allowed us to rejoin the MW after a mile or so.

My only other comment is that there were hardly any other walkers and that some sections are overgrown with brambles. Not a major problem if you are wearing long trousers and sleeves.

In short a very pleasant walk and we are grateful to Encounter for the care you put into its organisation.

We did a bit of a "mix and match" walk, and I was very impressed by how helpful the people at Encounter were in putting the holiday together for us, and how patiently they answered all our questions. I loved the detailed notes we got for each day, this way we could really just arrive and get started.

All went very smoothly, from accomodation to luggage transfer to finding places to eat! In terms of the walks, my favourite bit was the Coleridge Way Walk - the scenery is really varied, including fields and wonderful old woodland and a taste of open moorland, some rivers, some hills with a view, and finally the sea at Lynmouth. The way takes you through small villages, and while we were cordially received in all the accomodations, many of the hosts on the Coleridge Way provided an especially warm welcome - much needed since it did rain much more on this section than on the coast and in the Mendips!

We felt that average walking times were calculated quite tightly, and even though we're reasonably fit we ended up taking longer almost every day. Finding the way was easy on the Coleridge Way Walk, even easier on the Coast Path, but at times a bit tricky on the West Mendip Way. We were alerted by Encounter of a recent rerouting of the trail, and this was sort of signposted on the ground, but there were quite a few gaps. With the notes and the OS maps, we didn't get lost, but had to stand around and wonder for a while several times. On a related note, I liked that the OS maps include the option to download the paper maps onto your mobile device - the combination of the paper map for the larger overview and the OS app with its GPS location function makes it really hard to get lost.

All in all we had a lovely holiday and I'm sure we'll be back for more in the future!

The walk was very good particularly the western section and the places visited en-route including Wells , Glastonbury, Cheddar, Frome added a historic dimension. The accommodation was as always very varied but very good and it was always fairly easy to find a place to eat on an evening. Luggage transfers went smoothly. It got a bit hot towards the end of the walk but that was true of most places in the UK but at least there was quite a bit of woodland shade. Thanks again Encounter for another well organised trip.

Hi there,

Regarding the walk as a whole, we were more impressed with the West Mendip Way than the East. We loved Wells and Cheddar Gorge and gave Wookey Hole a wide berth due to the "hundreds" of small children running around!

We had fabulous weather, a bit too hot for walking, but not complaining.

Accommodation was pretty good and hosts friendly and helpful. Special mention to the Penscot Inn who put us in their coolest room, which was much appreciated.

Regarding walk notes, there is an error in the West Mendip script. At Loxton the notes say "on reaching the road turn right...." actually you need to turn left. There is no waymark on the junction to help either.

Coming out of Wells for about a mile all the waymarks have been broken off. You can see little bits of plastic where they should be. Presumably this is vandalism, but we found the way after a short diversion. Route was very overgrown in places particularly the first couple of miles after Shepton Mallet. A number of fields in this area have had the footpaths ploughed over and planted out, so very heavy going.

Our highlights were the lovely City of Wells and walking from Crook Peak to Wavering Down. The views are wonderful.

Thanks for all your arrangements, everything worked like clockwork as usual

Best Wishes

Maggie and Pat

Dear Damon,

We enjoyed our holiday.

I offer you some brief notes that may be of help to you and to future walkers.

The baggage transfer was first class.

Your notes
Absolutely first class. Told us everything we wanted to know. However some of the distances were under estimated.

West Mendip Way notes
Generaly good but some misprints. One mistake. At point 4, first paragraph, the instruction after the reference to "the old school house" to "turn right and walk along until you shortly take a right turn down Church Lane" should read "turn left and walk along until you shortly take a right turn down Church Lane".

Glastonbury Pilgrimage Way
Again the notes were generally good but after leaving the route of the Monarch Way some of the paths were very neglected and overgrown. Moreover, some of the paths on the ground were not on the correct line according to the OS. (We had three GPS devices, two with the OS 1:25,000 and one with the OS 1:50,000 so could be quite sure of this.)

East Mendip Way notes
Again some misprints ("filed" for "field" being the most common). Generally good but not up to the standard of the West Mendip notes.

Refreshments on the route
You may like to know that the Penscot Inn at Shipham was closed. This notwithstanding that their website and a board outside both said that it was open. We used Lenny's Cafe instead which we would heartily recommend. The other pubs we used on our walk were excellent. We would particularly recommend The Queen Victoria Inn at Priddy and The Red Lion at West Pennard.

As I said at the outset, we enjoyed the holiday. Thank you for all your work to make it work for us.

Kind regards,

Robert

This is a very pleasant easy walking tour of Somerset, England. Lots of history here and some beautiful architecture. Accommodations were perfect and like always the reliability of luggage delivery was spot on.

Firstly, we really enjoyed the walk; we had not walked in this area before and found the scenery beautiful and the route very varied from the spectacular section around Cheddar Gorge to the lovely woodlands.  The accommodation was also fine but we do have the following comments, which I hope will prove helpful for future walkers.

We found the distances given for each day slightly deceptive.  I think we covered at least one extra mile per day than that stated on the itinerary. 

On the whole the route is very well signposted and the accompanying route notes were generally very clear and easy to follow apart from a minor blip on the West Mendip Way shortly after leaving Wookey Hole.  In line 4 of paragraph 18 there seems to be an extra two sentences beginning "Turn right in the field  .... keep straight ahead until you come to the road." In actual fact you only need the last line "Turn right down the road until the junction at the bottom."

We did, however, encounter very misleading instructions towards the end of paragraph 12, 4th line down on page 8 of the East Mendip Way notes.  This reads "At the road junction go left along the road and at the next junction turn right until you come to a footpath sign on your left." We tried to follow these instructions and they took us a long way in the wrong direction.  There was also no way marker at this point.  All the notes need to say is "Turn right at the road until you come to a footpath sign on your left."

On the final section, Shepton Mallet to Frome the itinerary warns that the path can be quite muddy.  In actual fact it proved to be extremely muddy and several of the paths through the woodlands were obstructed by fallen trees.

Otherwise all the arrangements went well and we would thoroughly recommend this walk.

kind regards

Janet

I chose to walk the West Mendip Way on the same weekend that the Beast from the East 2.0 decided to pay Somerset a visit. I arrived at Bristol Temple Meads station and purchased my ticket to Weston Super Mare with a quip from the ticket attendant that ‘it’s cold down there and I hope you brought some thermals with you’. I had not. Once I arrived in Weston I decided to walk the first two miles to Uphill along the beach before following the route into Bleadon. The first part of the walk into Compton Bishop was glorious, I had warmed up nicely and the occasional snow flurries made everything look particularly pretty, I passed group of walkers walking in the opposite direction with a cheery hello (walkers are a very friendly bunch) before pausing to eat a chocolate bar under a WMW sign so that I could take an obligatory selfie. Some words of advice- Lion bars are not the best choice when it is freezing cold, there is a real danger of chipping a tooth.

I reached Shute Shelf in good time and started my ascent up to Crook Peak. This part of the route is steep but the climb was worth it for the views alone. It was at Crook Peak that I started to notice how cold it was, my hands were a weird colour and I had to put on another layer. As I was applauding myself for the climb and putting on my fleece whilst jumping up and down to try to stop my legs going numb, I watched in awe as a young guy ran past me in shorts. I very quickly felt less smug.

The next section of the walk was my favourite, I passed moorland ponies as I descended through Cross Plain into Kings Wood. I admit I mostly enjoyed it as it was all downhill but I do have a soft spot for ponies and woodland. Once I reached the main road I made a quick stop at the petrol station for supplies before continuing up the wooded Winscombe Drove and along a public footpath. It was at this point that I left the Way to walk the last few miles to my campsite for the night. With numb hands I made a rough job of pitching my tent for the night before putting on all of my clothes and ordering a well-deserved pizza which was delivered directly to my tent by a very nice delivery man who called me crazy. The next morning I woke to the sight of several inches of snow and a very concerned campsite owner who ushered me inside her house to warm up by the Aga with a cup of coffee. After checking that bus services were still running and that I wasn’t completely stranded I walked back down a now snow covered Winscombe Drove in fairy tale like surroundings with a short stop to make a snow angel before catching the bus back to Weston.

Overall I would highly recommend walking the Mendip Way. The scenery is varied and the views are beautiful, especially from the top of Crook Peak. There are also plenty of towns and villages to visit along the Way and quaint pubs for that much deserved pint of ale at the end of a hard days walk.  I will definitely be walking it again so that I can complete the whole route into Frome, but probably in warmer weather next time!