Yatbla one

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I walked this on a cold bright December day from Blagdon to Yatton and enjoyed it. Most of the route was well signed and easily navigable. Access is mostly gates and kissing gates and there are a few stiles. Some ups and downs and rough paths but mostly easy walking.

A short climb through pastures up from Blagdon leads into woodland on the Mendip edge and then down again towards Burrington on a track through fields, with good views into the Yeo Valley and over the Severn Estuary beyond.

The route then heads down to the village of Rickford on the main road. Unless you want to go to the pub there, I would recommend continuing straight on west via the bridleway and lane into Burrington instead to cut out a bit of fiddly extra walking. If you do want to go into Rickford, take the eastern fork of the bridleway to the A368 at the bottom and cross there as it is safer. And if just generally ongoing via this route, the 50m or so along the main road here as mapped is safe enough as there is a bit if a verge on the south side.

Beyond Burrington, and across the A368 for good, the short section of minor road was quiet when I walked it.

From there the route crosses parkland behind Langford Court. This a nice walk but there was a dearth of signage and I climbed over three low electric stock fences on the way through. Turn in off the road through the metal farm gate with the strand of barbed wire wrapped around the top bar (no footpath sign there when I passed by). Go west to the far corner of the little nearby copse and two ageing wooden stiles take you into the park. On the way through you find yourself looking at topiary in the garden of the big house across a haha. At the far end, footpath signs start to appear and there is a new metal kissing gate onto the A38 so hopefully the infrastructure on this section is being updated and it will become more welcoming. It deserves to be walked more but as it was I relied on my gps to find the right line through.

The A38 Langford bypass is fast but the crossing is safe, with good views. There is a pub in the village and the route continues on towards the floodplain of the Congresbury Yeo river via intensive dairying and arable around Stock Farm (more negotiating electric cattle fences here. They have helpfully left big headlands around some of the fields but some of them have scrubbed up).

From here on it is a mixture of horsiculture, biofuels (crossing one field - on a clear path - I was surrounded by 8 foot high elephant grass rustling in the wind) and pastures on the bank of the river along the Two Rivers Way to Congresbury. This is another bit of nice bit of walking but it can get a soggy and muddy with floody runnels at wet times of year.

There follows a short bit of annoying fiddling through the housing estates of Congresbury (its fine to walk up the quiet one-time high street on the B-road instead) which brings you to the A370 (easy to cross).

A short pleasant climb up into fields and woods around the back of Cadbury Hill leads from there to Yatton.

The end of the walk to the railway station from here is an unexciting yomp through a mile of housing. If you want shops etc, divert to the trafficky central B-road to the west.

Overall, its a very decent route.

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