Failand Hill trail head by road B3128.
| Failand Hill from road
B3128 Failand Hill |
| Estimated net time | Only a few minutes. | ||
| Difficulty | Unless you ask for permission to enter a private property's garden this hike is challenging and cumbersome. | ||
| Drinking water | No access to running water. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route (July 2014). | ||
| Parking | Room for a couple of cars around trail head. | ||
| Start height | 155 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 5 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 0.3 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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From Bristol drive M5 south-west across River Avon and to junction 19. Turn left onto road A369 and turn right onto High Street after a few metres. Measure from here.
- At 730 metres (just under 0.5 mile) turn left onto Mill Lane.
- At 1.2 km (0.8 mi) make sure you fork right to stay on Mill Lane.
- At 4.0 km (2.5 mi) turn left when you get to road B3128 (Clevedon Road).
- At 4.6 km (2.9 mi) park on the left hand side of the road a few metres before the highest point of the road.
To get to the highest point of Failand Hill, which is only a few metres away, you have two options; either ask for permission to get inside the private land a few metres further along the road, or cross the fence next to the lay-by, cross the field and force your way through the very dense bush. But whatever you do you have to enter private land.
I was in Bristol a couple of days for a workshop, together with colleague Trond, and after work this nice and sunny Tuesday we drove south of the city to bag a couple of hills. First on the menu was Failand Hill, which turned out to be a bit of a bugger since it was pretty obvious the summit was located inside a well fenced private property. We walked around the highest point and climbed some fences, but weren't able to find an opening without climbing the gate in front of the house. Hence we only got very close to the true summit, after a walk of 1.4 km. Given that the distance from the trail head to the summit is just over 100 metres this is a considerable de-tour in relative terms.
After having got only very close to the summit I decided to claim it, and then we set off to the second "hike" of the evening; Dundry Down.