The gentle magic of walking in Somerset’s Mendip Hills
John Harris and family revisit the first serious hill-walk they made in a landscape that’s more comforting than challenging – just what they’re looking for at this time of year
I moved to Somerset in 2009, from a home in Wales between Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) and the Black Mountains. The change took me closer to London and rid me of painfully long train journeys, but I really missed the landscape – and, more specifically, walking around it. The little I knew about my new home county was mostly centred on two attractions: the Glastonbury festival and Cheddar Gorge – that deep topographical crack that draws thousands of tourists to caves, overpriced cheese and the kind of shops and cafes that make it feel like a mid-level English coastal resort, without any sea. It didn’t seem to offer much of a substitute.
What I didn’t know about was the other 70-odd square miles of the Mendip Hills, all craggy outcrops, dry-stone walls, waterfalls and dizzyingly beautiful views. After I moved, the weekly walks I eventually started doing with my two kids took us to this part of Somerset again and again. And they still do, not least in the winter. The scenery is, of course, not nearly as spectacular as the landscape I’d left behind, but replete with its own charms: faint echoes of the Lakes and Yorkshire Dales, and walks that perfectly suit the cold months. Here, a proper outing can be done without being overly arduous, and if the weather doesn’t turn too hostile, a day outside can deliver a lovely cosiness: the landscape is friendly and comforting, rather than challenging.
