West Country Epiblog

We were away for 19 days in all visiting Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and the Forest of Dean seeking out food festivals. We moved 12 times stopping on 4 Britstops, CC and CCC main sites, a CL and several commercial sites. We covered about 800 miles and the longest stay was 3 nights at the small site at East Crinnis.

We fished at several sites in between foody events. The Cornish Food festival at Truro was poor, the Newquay Fish festival had a nice location on the quay with some good sea food to eat. The Forest of Dean festival was the best and we only found that accidentally while looking for a newspaper shop. The same was true of the Country and Western festival which we found while looking for a site near to Western Super Mare.

The 3lb rainbow trout I caught at Redbrook, in the Wye Valley, on the way home was delicious by the way.

Home via the Cotswolds

We left The Lion Inn at Trelleck by 10am on a fine sunny morning. The drive north offers fine views over the Usk valley before dropping down in to Monthmouth, then on to Ross-on-Wye and bypassing Gloucester to first Cotswolds stop at Burford. We parked up in the free car park and walked back into the pretty village to browse the shops and find a sunny spot for a coffee break.

Then on to Lower Slaughter to have some lunch. Unfortunately I tried to drive (unsuccessfully) under a 2.35m canopy at the riverside manor restaurant and had to make a careful retreat. Impossible to park on the road for double yellow lines so we carried on to Stow on The Wolds and had nice ploughman platters at the Porch House which claims to be oldest inn in England (and we thought that honour went to the Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham) established in 947AD.

There is a good cook shop in Stow where I found a replacement sink drainer and Rosemary invested in some new mugs. We had parked in the Tesco car park so took advantage of the occasion to get some provisions for returning home.

We arrived back at 6:15pm to start unpacking the van and gut the trout ready for tomorrows supper.  

Forest of Dean

 We left the farm site to go fishing but managed to fit in a craft centre and another food festival en route. It was the Forest (of Dean) Festival, that combined local food with forest crafts and some good music from the Paris Jazz Cafe Swing band. It was a very enjoyable afternoon and we topped up with deli foods before finding the Bigwell fly fishery at Rockwood in the Wye Valley. We have been in and out of England and Wales several times today! At 6:30 it was getting dark, I was the only fisherman left and was just about to give up when I finally caught a very nice 3lb rainbow trout. A very frustrating 2 hours finally paid off.

We stopped the night at a Britstop pub at Trelleck a few miles south of Monmouth. There was another van there from Leicestershire. We  had a good chat with him and the bar lady in the otherwise empty bar. They did not serve food on Sunday evenings.

Severn crossing to Wales

We were off our pitch by 10:30 but stopped at the site cafe for a nice breakfast bap before we left Brean. I decided to go to the Wye Valley to try and catch some trout on the way home. We went via Weston-super-Mare and Clevedon in a mix of heavy showers and sunny intervals. We went over the old Severn toll bridge  to Chepstow in Wales where there happened to be a M&S food hall to shop for dinner, then have a stroll down the main street.
We checked out the Woolaston trout lakes I had spotted on the Web and then we went to the nearby CS at Plusterwine Farm for the night. Very friendly lady farmer has a well set up mini campsite with panoramic views of the river Severn and good facilities but not cheap. The wandering hens provided some entertainment.

The farm is actually back in England but on the edge of the Forest of Dean so we only spent about 2 hours in Wales shopping at Chepstow with a cup of tea and a sticky bun.