The UK is blessed with a huge range of public pathways criss-crossing the countryside, enshrined in our Public Rights of Way and captured in detail on the wonderful Ordnance Survey maps (the best in the world in my opinion). The pinnacle of these paths are the 13 National Trails: long distance paths including the formidable Pennine Way, awesome Cotswold Way and the astonishing South West Coast Path. But just under this top level are a wide range of long distance paths that deserve top status but have yet to quite make it. And we have one literally on our doorstep: the Mendip Way.

It was opened in 1979, and is defined in two contrasting halves: the West Mendip Way running from the coast at Uphill (between Weston-Super-Mare and Brean Down) to Wells, travelling through the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), and then the East Mendip Way continuing on from Wells and ending up in the lively town of Frome. In total 50 miles (or 80km) with around 31 miles of that on the West Mendip Way.

This week the Mendip Way was relaunched following an extensive piece of work to improve and better way-mark the route in both directions. The Mendip Hills AONB worked in partnership with the Mendip Society, Mendip Ramblers and the Rotary Club to get this work done and now Visit Somerset are actively promoting it. The whole Mendip Way can be completed in just three days but most people might choose to add some days and take time to relax and enjoy the walks and the stopovers a little more. If you want to do the trail as a continuous walk, maybe even with luggage transfers between stops to keep the load light, then Encounter Walking Holidays can tailor a walking holiday just for you. But alternatively if you prefer too stitch together your own holiday then one strong possibility, especially if you'd like to cover just the West Mendip Way, is to base yourself in Cheddar. Indeed Gorge View Cottage is just 2 minutes away from the Mendip Way route. 

The options then are to do two or three "bus walks", all covered in detail and freely downloadable from the Cheddar Walking website (walks 9 and 10). Day one could be a bus to Weston-Super-Mare, with an optional 3 mile walk along the beach, and then with the Mendip Way proper starting from Uphill, and continuing 13 miles to Shute Shelve, via Crook Peak, Wavering Down and Kings Wood to where the Strawberry Line rail path passes underneath the Mendip Hills, and the Mendip Way, in the old rail tunnel. At this point, unless you are on a serious roll, you can break and bus the short way back to Cheddar for a gentle evening.

Picking up the next day and busing back to Shute Shelve you'd have a gentler 7-mile walk via Shipham, skirting the Mendip Hills high-point at Black Down but worth a detour up for the views from Beacon Batch. Then on down through Black Rock reserve ending up walking down one side of spectacular Cheddar Gorge through the National Trust owned land.

The final day would be a 12-mile walk. Bus out to Wells, and then a route that takes you out of England's smallest "city" past the cathedral and along the exquisite Vicar's Close before heading on up to Wookey Hole, then to Ebbor Gorge and a perfect lunch halt at Priddy Village. The final leg across the top of the Mendips and through Draycott Sleights reserve finally brings you back down to Cheddar again.

You can find out a whole lot more on the AONB web site and soon they'll have the detailed East Mendip Way guide published too.

Some cryptic acronyms in the title for this blog, but what it refers to is the National Trust's South West Outdoor Festival 2017. The second such festival, the first being in Heddon Valley, North Devon in 2016. This time it was centred at the top of Cheddar Gorge (much of the gorge is NT land).
It all happened this past weekend and offered a huge range of outdoor activities at a serious level: not just mountain biking, hill running, kayaking, but (given where we are) rock climbing, pot-holing, caving, bat watching and ... some lovely walking!

The walking was organised by Cheddar Walking, the Walkers are Welcome initiative in Cheddar that we at Gorge View Cottage helped start and still help lead. Whilst most people (circa 1,500 at the festival over the long weekend) were there for more extreme sport, of course some wanted less physical things to do, and to take in the beautiful area. We organised five half-day walks over the three day from the Festival Site near Back Rock Reserve: to Priddy village, along the West Mendip Way; to Yeo Valley's stunning HQ canteen in Blagdon, a walk taking you over Beacon Batch the highest point of the Mendip Hills; and of course the classic circular Gorge Walk.

Despite the weather (wet and windy at times, but sunny and clear at others) all our walks seem to stay dry, the views revealed themselves and those joining us had a really good time, some wonderful sights, and good-to-moderate exercise.

All this was also strongly supported by the Mendip Hills AONB and the Somerset Wildlife Trust who protect and promote this stunning area. A big thanks to them both.

Of course any of these walks can be self-navigated if you come to Cheddar, just ask us for the directions when you are staying or check out the Cheddar Walking web site.

One of the most impress natural reserve areas in our locality is not up on the beautiful Mendip Hills but out on the Somerset Levels just past the Isle of Wedmore. The Avalon Marshes comprise a rich set of important and accessible wildlife reserves run by, variously, Somerset Wildlife Trust, the RSPB, Natural England and others. Shapwick Heath, Meare Heath, Ham Wall all join up together in to a wonderful area, all knitted together around the Avalon Marshes Centre with local art shop, a great eco cafe, and some recreated Neolithic (New Stone Age) constructions. Lots to do and see so find out more here.

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And now all this has been recognised by the Avalon Marshes winning the National Lottery Award for Best Environmental Project. Beating off over 1,300 other entries is quite something, and the many volunteers who over many years have made it what it is rightly deserve it. The award itself was presented by comedian Bill Bailey who comes from Somerset and is a keen walker himself. The Visit Somerset article tells you more.

We've featured the area before in this blog for the local art centre, and the Starling murmurations for which it is famous. Anyone visiting the Mendip and Cheddar and who has a love for natural landscape and wildlife should try and get there. Sadly not that easy without a car (its about 9 miles away), but you can get to Glastonbury on buses and then it is a lovely traffic-free walk or cycle out along the disused Glastonbury to Burnham-on-Sea railway branch line. 

We are delighted to announce that the cottage is now fully enabled for electric vehicles. We have just today had a new electric charging point fitted that can deliver 32A AC charging on a Type 2 connector. Most electric vehicles (EVs), and indeed newer "plug-in hybrid" vehicles, can use a Type 2 connector. The 32A charge rate will mean most EVs can charge from empty to full in 3-4 hours. Of course in practise most vehicle journeys are around 20-40 mile in range and so would only use around 12% to 25% of a battery's capacity, and a top-up charge would take less than an hour.
Our system is smarter still and will use the power coming from the solar panels on the cottage roof whenever they are exporting power. This means charging will be partly or wholly locally solar powered. The panels are not enough even on the sunniest of days to support the full fast 32A charging, but as our electricity supply has been 100% Green tariff since that was available years ago, a recharge will always be 100% from renewable energy. And if you do not want your car in a hurry then it can charge slowly and purely from the solar power available on the roof.
We will be offering EV charging for free to cottage guests and that means local travel will be completely free and green. All very exciting especially as the uptake of EVs and plug-in hybrids is accelerating, and now we hear news that the UK Government will ban sales of pure internal combustion (petrol/diesel) cars from 2040, and manufacturers like Volvo, and now BMW, are working to move their entire offering to electric, or electric assist, in a much shorter time span.

We're really pleased that the wildlife in the garden keeps growing. Lots of birds & bees of a wide variety, the badgers, foxes and hedgehogs, the frogs and toads and insects that love our ponds, the ladybirds eating the aphids on the veg, and even the slow worms. Now we have a new arrival on the block. Mary was just about to chuck some cuttings on top of one of our compost heaps when she jumped back with surprise. Basking in the sun was a beautiful Grass Snake (see picture). We got a photo or two as (s)he stayed perfectly still (playing dead?) yet keeping a beady eye on us. Finally enough was enough and the snake slid away. One more sighting a few days later this time in the weedy edges of the pathways through our veg plot.

We did have to check this was not an Adder (they're the one venomous native snake in the UK but rarely seen (very shy) and even more rarely in gardens. In all my life I have only glimpsed three Adders and then briefly as they quickly slide off. But no, this was definitely a Grass Snake, which is non-venomous. Apparently they can grow to two meters long. We reckon this one was about 2-3 feet in length, so maybe still youngish. Their one defence, a last resort as they prefer to keep away, is to excrete a smelly garlic-like fluid from their bottoms. Hmmm, something to avoid!

So - happy as we are to have this newcomer, we are also a bit concerned because the main thing Grass Snakes like to dine out on is frogs and toads. We have a very healthy population in our big pond, small pond and polytunnel pond, all helping to keep the slugs at bay. We'd be pretty unhappy if they all got gobbled up but hopefully the whole food chain should keep in some form of balance.

We're pleased to say the cottage has just gone "smart". Just in terms of audio-visual options though - we have upgraded the TV in the cottage to a Smart TV, which also happens to be bigger, higher resolution and more energy efficient. The "smart" moniker refers to the fact that the TV is also connected to the internet and so amongst various clever things it can stream video on demand. For many people this is probably becoming the norm: BBC, ITV and C4 catch up services are all there. It has a useful EPG (Electronic Programme Guide). And that's all great.

What it does not have and the old TV did, is any ability to play DVDs. We used to put a modest varied selection of DVDs in the cottage in case anyone wanted to just snuggle up and be entertained if there was nothing on. But it seems even DVDs are slowly becoming older technology. Instead we're offering Netflix to guests. This means a huge range of TV shows and films, including entire "box sets" of series are available, to play on demand, and to pause and pick up again if wanted. So a vastly bigger selection than before, and it keeps growing and keeps up-to-date.

Why now? Of course one of the sustainable challenges of modern life is the fast turnaround of advancing technology, with people needing to upgraded computers, phones, TVs and much more well before the older product actually fails. The best sustainable approach is to try and make technology last as long as possible before moving it on. In our case though the change is because we needed a TV for our Annexe which we are refurbishing and plan to offer on weekends, via AirBnB (more on this in the next post). So rather than buy a new TV for the Annexe we have moved the cottage one over, and took the opportunity to ensure the cottage remains as premium as possible.

Postscript: this blog title is a little homage to a comedy programme I loved as a young teen. Some of the older readers of this blog might remember the American TV comedy "Get Smart", a satire-cum-spoof of the James Bond films written in part by the wonderful Mel Brooks. The lead character, a secret service agent, was an inept and bumbling character in the mould of Inspector Clouseau (the equally wonderful Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther), but in this case armed with the most idiotic of secret weapons.

So following a poll featured in the Daily Mail to find what people think is the "Best View in Britain", whilst the view from the summit of Mount Snowdon came in first, Cheddar Gorge was a creditable fifth. The views from inside the gorge looking up, or on top looking down are all spectacular, but the view that people find the most iconic is the one from the highest point on the east side looking over the gorge to the reservoir and on along the Mendip Ridge towards the Quantock Hills.

The full list was: Snowdon summit, the Three Sisters mountain range in Glen Coe, Stonehenge, St Ives Bay, Cheddar Gorge, Loch Ness (from Dores), Buttermere in the Lake District, the Palace of Westminster (viewed from Westminster Bridge), The Giant's Causeway in Co Antrim and finally Loch Lomond.

So we feel Cheddar Gorge is up there in the best of company. See more on the Daily Mail article.

Last week we had our second artist in residence (not a formal position, just a guest who was an artist). Last year we had the lovely Australian Lucy Campenau staying: we blogged about it and she posted a lot of her work from her stay on her ArtShedAngel Facebook page. Indeed Lucy is planning to return this year. Out latest artist was Carolyn Lamb, a Bristol-based painter, and so considerably closer to us than Aussie Lucy. Carolyn loves Cheddar Gorge as a subject and taking a week out to paint in the cottage in March gave her the opportunity to paint from inside the cottage when the weather was less than clement. The view across to the gorge is rather beguiling.

Carolyn also has her own art blog, and exhibits her oils and sketches in Bristol (currently at the Caffee Clifton). Anyone can buy her work and we are thinking of buying one ourselves to add to the local art we put up on the walls of the cottage. Check out Carolyn's blog (including sketches and paintings) from her cottage stay here: "Artist Retreat at Gorge View Cottage, Cheddar"; and here: "Cheddar Gorge in the Mist" on ArtSiteCarolyn.

If you're expecting some reference to fossil-fuel-burning soot-belching locomotives, or 4-6-2 wheel configurations, or heritage railway lines, the sorry but this article is not for you. That's not to say I am not an enthusiast for this old and wonderful way of travel despite its less than great eco credentials.

No. This article is about the rise of steam cleaning. For the cottage we have always used eco products, including EM (effective microorganism) cleaners. But of course better still is to use no products at all. And that is possible using steam cleaning. A pretty old technology brought up to date, and for some years now it is something we use on every turn-around of the cottage. It not only sanitises using the heat of the steam, but also loosens dirt for easy mopping up with a micro-fibre cloth.

Whilst no chemicals are involved, it does of course use energy to heat, and then keep hot, the pressurised water container. Given that we clean during the day when no other power is being used in the cottage, the steam cleaner is pretty much fully powered by our solar panels if sunny. If not sunny then the PV contributes and our green import electricity does the rest. And we're not talking much electricity anyway for a hour or so's use.
 
We use our Karcher Steam Cleaner (pictured) to clean the oak floors, the bathroom (floor, wall tiles, grout, glass and ceramics), and the kitchen area including if needed the oven. We still use eco-products on kitchen and other surfaces, and the toilet, but steam is king otherwise. We also see that this has over the years helped enormously with maintaining the condition of the wood floors and tiles - for example almost no little black mould forming on grout and sealant in the bathroom.

So we're converts and are very happy to strongly recommend this way of eco-cleaning.

Toot, toot.