Caswin one

Slow Way not verified yet. Verify Caswin here.

I have very little to add to the epic review of my co-stroller except to show a picture of a very nice oil beetle found on the path, and a typical honey coloured stone house. Very nice walk, slightly irritating diversion as detailed by MM.

Found this nice Slow Way to explore while visiting the area to watch Bristol’s fabulous Fantasy Orchestra gigging at the minuscule but perfectly-formed Yarlington Fringe festival nearby. The occupants of this little village certainly know how to enjoy themselves!

As for the Slow Way......

We walked from Castle Cary to Wincanton. It is enjoyable and surprisingly undulating, with several gentle to moderate ups and downs as it traverses this prosperous, occasionally orchardy area of South Somerset farmland. On the way are plenty of beautiful trees, a couple of little villages with yellow limestone buildings typical of the region, and some good views. About half the route is on minor roads bordered by tall hedges, but the lanes are very quiet and you can often see out ahead, particularly going in this direction. Most of the rest of the route comprises two over-the-hill off-road sections. The first, near the Castle Cary end, uses tracks and the other, towards Wincanton, a footpath through a zone of pastures and arable fields.This latter part of the walk has the best of the views.

The road and track parts are all easy to navigate but this Slow Way doesn't have the best signage and there is some ageing path infrastructure in the fields at the Wincanton end where at some times of year (including now, with mowing grass and wheat crops growing on), the path of least resistance may be to walk around the western headland edges of some fields rather than taking the direct line of the footpath through them. There is also a slight current route confusion at one point around Cuttlesham Farm, which I will describe later. These minor irritations are the only reason I didn't give this Slow Way five stars. Otherwise it is a great walk.

The route out of Castle Cary town leads uphill to cross the main road before heading back down the other side into Hadspen village in a pretty valley. Here the Slow Way turns off-road to climb Nettlecombe Hill. The lane up out of the village looks more like a driveway or access road and isn't signed but is easy enough to find. It becomes a ferny, cobbled old drover’s road uphill and then a green lane as you head onto the hilltop. Once on the flat it soon reaches a farm track (Hurn Lane) and turns south along it. There is a dairy farm here and at one point we waited a few moments for a herd of cows to make their way across our track into their field. Hurn Lane itself was rutted from tractor traffic and had some big puddles after a wet early Spring, but there was room on a drier ridge on the side for walkers to avoid the worst of them and there are good views from it on the approach to the A359.

After the main road crossing (safe) there is a couple of miles of mostly downhill road walking, passing the big carpark for ‘The Newt’ (an expanding upmarket rural-world country club/hotel-type venture), then the village of Shepton Montague (where there is a restauranty pub - the Montague Inn - a few hundred yards off the Slow Way).

At Higher Cuttlesham Farm, the route goes off-road again for the last couple of miles of open country before the edge of Wincanton. Note that the path now turns in a gateway a little to the east of the main entrance marked on the OS map.

And here is where it gets a bit confusing for a short stretch...

The landowners are clearly encouraging people to take a permissive path to the west of the mapped right of way using a new green lane they have created around the edges of their (quite possibly horse-grazed) fields. The line of this permissive path is the obvious route to take if you are coming from Wincanton, but not if you are coming from Castle Cary, when you can happily head up the hill on the (still existing) actual right of way but arrive at the top of the fields to find that the access stiles have fallen into disuse and are now scrubbed up, and you have to divert 50m or so to the southwest corner of the field (w3w coherent.petulent.trips) where the new access gate from the permissive path is, and then have to hop over a post and rail fence to access it.

I haven’t flagged this as an access issue because you can still use the mapped right of way with only this short, slightly annoying gate-getting-out diversion at the top (as we did) and, judging by the tracks through the grass, both routes appear to be used by walkers at the moment. But maybe in future the Slow Way might end up getting altered a tad when things become clearer.

At this point the path arrives on the hill top and into a zone of silage grass crops and wheat fields. The views are great from now on, but the first field had very thick mowing grass which was an exhausting wade-through. It wouldn’t be like this all year but in such conditions I’d recommend going around the western headland instead (and it looks as though that’s what local walkers choose to do). Ditto for some of the subsequent fields. But although some more attentive navigating is required for this area, and one or two of the stiles were collapsing to boot (alternative gateways right by them), it does look as if this path is reasonably regularly used, and I'm not surprised - you can see for miles from here.

Eventually the route exits a field corner via a kissing gate onto a lane (it doesn't look like the path right next to it in the field on the OS map still exists) and very shortly arrives at the edge of Wincanton. The last near-mile takes a quiet route downhill through a new housing estate, then via an alleyway and the edge of playing fields, leads to the road up into the centre which is a final short trudge uphill.

The going is mainly good underfoot, with only the odd muddy bit today after a wet start to the Spring. It looks as though you may well encounter livestock in one or two of the fields along the way in summer (horses and cows) but we didn't today. There is the usual rural assortment of gates, stiles, the odd kissing gate, and some steps in Wincanton.

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