Most walks through Somerset are flat, and today’s walk to the town at “Heart of the Levels” was certainly no exception.

The start of the walk was pretty bleak, as to be expected when you begin within spitting distance of a motorway. In fact this was our first time crossing one on the walk so far, as motorways exist neither west nor south of Exeter.

OS maps and its lazy route optimization aims to, as far I can tell, strike a balance between minimizing distance travelled between two points, and time spent on roads. Often it does a good job, but today it favored me walking for almost a 3 mile stretch on a busy A-road. I opted to elongate my route slightly, by traipsing over a few farmers fields. Although the paths showed bright and clear on the map, the recent tilling of the soil, meant any notion of a path had been swept away and buried beneath the new furrows.

My modified route, did have me stepping over a style almost straight into oncoming A-road traffic, as the pavement was inconveniently placed on the far side of the dual carriageway.

Anyway a bit of well time dashing between 40mph cars, saw us safely off the busy roads for the next 10 miles. The route basically followed farmers tracks parallel to, but half a mile away from the main A-road to Langport.

The tracks were generally pretty navigable, but except for the sections in between and far from the adjacent farms. Here fallen trees, unkempt brambles, path-wide mud baths all conspired to reduce our pace. Sadly, twice there were purposefully laid obstructions in the form of straw bales completely prevented a normal walking gait.

We only encountered livestock once directly on the path, and fortunately only sheep who were more cautious of us than we were of them.

And so pretty much before we knew it we were arriving into Langport having successfully navigated the muddy roads…