Run 748 - Liz Chargot Woods

Run 748    Chargot Woods        Hare: Liz        On Down: Ralegh’s Cross Inn                        Pack: Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Dormouse, Tenzing, Big Bird, Roadkill, Grasshopper, Phantom, Chris, Brush Off, Pink2Lips, Why Bother.  Martini 20 mins late.

We parked the cars at 347 metres and humidity was just as high after the hottest day of the year.   Instructions: some gates difficult to open.   Phantom found a descending grassy track.  Big Bird followed with the pack stretched out on the chase.  The trail widened and a check appeared at every bend of the downward zig-zags, enabling the pack to close up.    Espying white stuff on a rear entrance to a mine shaft, I ventured forth across a stream and ploughed bravely bare-legged into dense Urtica, searching like Harrison Ford, for the illusive second blob.  Histamine stabbed my veins as I called ON ON, though my gritted teeth, at the base of ascending wooden steps.  I listened to the screams below before checking, stupidly, a long way downhill.  The route was, of course, up to Kennisham Hill(382 m) and some had worked it out that we climbed a long way.  One of me made it 1000 feet but I was lucky not to have met the cruel fishhook near the summit. 

At one point, the ground was becoming very sodden, possibly water rushing from a pit-shaft, but a flight of well-built wooden steps took us up and over a bank and on to a dry track.

Bird Bird was running well and out in front a lot (must have been all that marshalling at the Wellington Ten) and we were led to a junction of ways where Brush Off and Soc App took the two right-hand (and uphill) paths, Big Bird to the left.   My only choice was downhill (again) and by the time I’d returned it had gone quiet.  Heading downwards to a dark valley that I now know to be Collyhill Wood, I came upon an attractive pheasant keeper, probably descended from the Doones, who had already gathered enough feathers to stuff a quilt.  I was about to ask if she could spare the time when I realised it was Pink2Lips.   “Could be useful”, she says.   Many a story will be told about the days of austerity!!

  

I could hear Phantom calling so I joined the group behind her.  She had an unconfirmed report of an animal, a deer she thought, but couldn’t specify the make.  Sorry, Phantom.  It doesn’t count if nobody else saw it!

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History Bit: This vast area is dotted with pits and is the reason for the Mineral Line that took the ore from these hills to Watchet harbour where it was shipped to Wales to make slag heaps.  

There were two fallers, Why Bother and Phantom, ‘though I didn’t see either event.           Back at the cars, the GPS clan compared recorded running distances but the greater interest was shown to the descent and ascent totals.  

Thank you, Liz.   A well thought-out hash on unusual terrain.