Saltford Walkers

14/06/2025

Our jubilee celebration will take the form of a treasure hunt around the village on Sunday afternoon July 13th.

26/05/2025

It's our jubilee year this year. Saltford Walkers is 50 years old. We will be celebrating. Updates here...

08/09/2024

We are starting a new walking group called "Canine Friends". These 2-4 mile walks are aimed at everyone, but particularly those who would like to bring dogs; see here: https://www.saltfordwalkers.org.uk/canine-friends/

We have planned 2 walks this year to see how things go, but we hope to make it permanent from next year. If you are interested, feel free to enquire via our website, and we will give you more details.

This group is open to everyone to come along, but it is especially suitable for those who would like to bring their dogs with them. We aim to plan routes that are dog-friendly, which means avoiding places where there are livestock as far as possible and places where dogs don’t have to be on leads ...

13/07/2022

Our table on the first day of the Saltford Festival in Saltford Hall.

04/06/2022

Today, eight of us enjoyed a dry, but slightly blustery, walk around the Burrington Combe area of Somerset. In actual fact, though we titled the walk “Burrington Combe” that only describes the place where we met up and started out from. The walk featured spectacular woodland and fantastic vistas from strategic landmarks in the area.

Leaving Burrington Combe, we passed through Mendip Lodge Wood, which is managed woodland comprising a wide variety of species of tree. From there we went up onto Dolebury Warren and on to the Iron Age hill fort that is there. From there we could see across to Weston-super-Mare, the Bristol channel and the mountains of Wales beyond that. The hill fort itself is simply huge, and the surrounding rampart and other archaeological features are very much visible to this day.

Descending from the hill fort, we walked along Dolebury Bottom, Back Lane and on to Rowberrow Bottom, which together formed a gradual climb up a narrow, steep-sided and wooded valley with a stream down the middle. Over the years, people have built variety of interesting houses there, one of which was very much a “Grand Designs” type of house which fitted the landscape well. This had sprung up since we did the pre-walk a year earlier.

At Holloway Rocks we took an initially steep path up through Rowberrow Warren, which is an ancient wooded area consisting of tall deciduous and coniferous trees. Part way up we received a much-needed boost in the form of a selection of chocolate bars kindly provided by one of our group.

Emerging from the woodland, we came to an area of open heath-land known as Black Down, again with wonderful views down the hill to the surrounding area. We climbed on up to Beacon Batch, which is the highest summit in the region, and which has a raised triangulation point at the top. We sat round the east side of this to have our lunch so as to provide maximum shelter from the wind, which was quite strong at that point. We also took the opportunity to watch aeroplanes landing and taking off from Bristol Airport. The view was clear enough to determine the airline of each, particularly Easyjet with its bright orange livery.

After descending back down to Burrington Combe, we walked across the nature reserve at Burrington Ham. Here we took an interesting detour to a rock formation before taking some narrow paths down to the planned route and back to our starting point. The route that we originally pre-walked also took us past this rock formation, but then went along a public footpath to the Rock of Ages. We re-planned the route after discovering the path down was actually a cliff used for abseiling, and not best suited for walking.

10/05/2022

Sixteen Walkers and Amblers met at Box on a beautifully sunny and warm Saturday for the start of a picturesque walk through Box, along the river towards Colerne. Tony planned the day well with a coffee stop in a field with an audience of excitable young cows in the next field and a lunch stop in Colerne churchyard where a large party of mourners were holding a funeral!

Graham kindly cleared the way over the stiles with his trusty clippers and we made it back to Box and the cars unscathed.

10/04/2022

There were 13 of us, including one new member, on today’s Ambler’s walk starting at Chew Magna Car Park (North). The sun was out and the sky was blue, so an excellent day for the walk, which was mostly on paths through fields. Tony led a lovely walk from Chew Valley Lake to Chew Magna, stopping for a coffee break at the impressive St Andrew’s Church in Chew Magna. Then it was back to the lake with the River Chew on our right. Lots of conversation added to the enjoyment of the walk, with some of us enjoying coffee/tea from ‘Salt and Malt’ before we made our homeward journeys.

10/04/2022

On 2nd April, 7 of us completed a 9.5 mile walk starting near Beckhampton in sunny but cold weather.

A long upward RUPP took us to the Wansdyke where we stopped for coffee and ginger cake. We then headed out along the mounds of the Wansdyke before emerging by 2 large radio masts.

This was our lunch stop overlooking Calne before heading along a deeply rutted Roman road. It was then a final incline to the Lansdown monument and around the hill to finally see the white horse.

An undulating path then took us back to our cars.

14/03/2022

Eight of us had a really muddy walk around Blagdon Lake today. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm when we were out of the wind. We had our coffee and biscuits beside the lake before continuing back to Ubley.

12/03/2022

Two years after it was originally scheduled we finally made the Backwell/Barrow walk! Nine members set off uphill to enjoy lovely views, a potted history of Barrow Court, whilst stood outside the listed manor house, a birds eye view of a plane taking off at Bristol Airport and a cosy picnic lunch in a hay barn. Then it was back downhill(!?) to get home for some serious muddy boot cleaning!

13/02/2022

Fourteen of us set out, having first looked in the almshouses chapel. Within 20 metres we were down to 13 after Peters boot heel had literally disintegrated on the pavement! After this setback we were off following first the green lane and then into Monument Lane ,the monument being really only a gatepost. A brief stop for coffee due to the strong wind was followed by a very claggy path towards Ashwick, and after stopping at the gatehouse to the Hall we followed the undulating path across fields back to the high street. A few amblers decanted to the pub before the rest of us returned to our cars. A warm welcome to 3 new members who I’m sure we’ll see again and hopefully to Peter with new boots!