This walk was splendid, one of our best yet. We caught the 376 to Chewton Mendip (site of an earlier not so great walk before I knew you should never go anywhere without an OS map or you will get lost and miss all the things), stopped at the Mendip Pantry to pick up some incredible pies, scotch eggs, lush baked goods of all sorts. Highly recommended. We ate our first pie alongside the church, which is so unexpectedly grand. It has Saxon origins, was rebuilt in the 12th century, most of what you can see was built in the 1400s by Carthusians and patched and rebuilt again across the centuries and into the 1800s (but look at the door, I mean just look at it)
Be still my heart. The tower is from the 15th century.
Continue reading Priddy Nine Barrows and the Priddy Circles →
This was an amazing walk, glad I threw away the guide books and just made our own using the Os Explorer maps. We started out in Wells, climbed up Tor Hill, continued on to King’s Castle (we think we noticed the right ditches amidst the trees to mark the hill forts that once stood there, but it is hard to tell). We passed some strange bunkers and great blocks of concrete that would have made sense next to the channel but made no sense here. Up to Maesbury Hill Fort — Iron Age ditches marking a settlement and wonderful views out across the Mendips and to Glastonbury Tor. Then over to Little London (not much like London — there is a fascinating description of where this name comes from here — one of many scattered across the UK which they argue were set up by Welsh cattle drivers. There was clearly a brewery here once, dye-works, workers’ cottages. Now it seems like it’s just rich people with varying degrees of bad taste). From there we jumped onto the Roman Road (I find it so amazing to traverse a Roman road, and followed the Fosse Way up across Beacon Hill (tumuli, glorious trees, perhaps my favourite place of the day) then down into Shepton Mallet — that first view of it is so beautiful, but we quickly entered the industrial area and those buses aren’t too regular.
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Just communities. Just cities. Just connections between country and city. Also, the weird and wonderful.
