One of my minor goals has been to successfully walk all the way from Bath Spa to Bristol Temple Meads. My previous attempts have usually involved the Bristol to Bath cycle route (which follows the old Midland Railway from Bath Green Park via Bitton). This route, while flat like most routes that use old railway lines, is a bit long. The SUSTRANS web site claims it's 13 miles, but I think a more reasonable estimate is 14-15 miles based on my experience - though to be fair I've always been forced to break it in the middle at Bitton and detour to Keynsham station (which is a significant-ish detour).

Today, though, I decided to walk along the River Avon to Keysham using initially the towpath (which I would note would actually now be hard to use for towing barges since there are plenty of trees along the actual river's edge once you're outside of Bath). This does meet up with the cycle route, which I used only to cross the river from the North Bank to the South Bank and then followed footpaths along the South Bank (and hence largely following GWR's railway from Bath Spa).

Once at Keynsham though, I checked my phone's map (I use the maps.me app which is based on the data from openstreetmap) and discovered that from there it was less than five miles to Bristol Temple Meads as the crow flies. The computed pedestrian route was six miles (which, as I'm not a crow or a car, is the route I wanted to follow).

It turned out to be pretty straight forward and followed footpaths in the main rather than roads. Usefully Bristol City have recently given most of their paths a hair cut recently, so the paths were only muddy and not completely overgrown!

I didn't stop for food - big meal was planned (and eaten) for the evening - total journey time about four hours and twenty minutes - which probably equates to about 14-15 miles (so I could have just followed the cycle path!).