Part 2 of Unreliable Mendip postcards from Somerset. The walk continues from Uphill to Wells. Harry Mottram put on his walking boots and set off to complete the journey through mud and snow ending with a meal deal in Wells
The Mendip Hills in winter can seem a barren landscape with its windswept fields, forlorn looking sheep and the depressed looking cows. No shops, villages or front parlours and gardens to look into and have a nose at. Not so in the past – as the hills were teeming with people, towns, villages, mines, prehistoric burial sites and even a fake 20th century city. As I trudged the West Mendip Way from Uphill to Wells at times I imagined what must have been unpromising grass mounds or piles of stones were instead places where the dead were buried, or spoil heaps from the mines or the remains of forts, roads and ruined buildings. Having mugged up on the history I imagined the ghosts of prehistoric hunter gatherers, Roman soldiers and their slaves, Medieval farmers, Victorian soldiers, World War 2 Home Guard troops and even invisible 21st century television and radio stars beamed from the TV masts populating the muddy paths and fields.
No need to imagine houses and streets at Uphill. The name is apt since its main feature is a hill with a Norman Church perched on the summit – presumably the original village was up on the hill – now it’s a wind blown heath overlooking the modern village below and with views to Brean Down on the other side of the River Axe – the river that emerges at Wookey Hole and lends its name to Axbridge.
From Uphill it’s a walk along residential streets lined with bungalows in the gap in the Mendips between Uphill and Bleadon Hill where the ridge rises up above the surrounding Somerset Levels extending to Wavering Down. The path follows a lane up to a Roman Road before snaking down through woods to Christon in another gap in the hills. The gap where the M5 and its continual flow of HGVs, white vans and cars heading towards Bristol or down to Devon.
‘So far I hadn’t spotted the legendary Beast of the Mendips’
It’s another climb up to Crook Peak from Christon and to the only mountain in Somerset – well that’s my description since you have to scramble over rocks to reach the summit with its views to Exmoor and Wales. This is my favourite section of the Mendips since it is four miles of largely unspoilt landscape of gorse, heather, low trees and rocky outcrops. Past mining activities have left a few scars and there’s a restored Saxon boundary wall running along the highest part – and a stone bench with the inscription “Only a hill but all of life to me.” Crook Peak is so good they named it thrice: crook is from the Celtic, Peak is Saxon and Hill is modern English – with acknowledgment to Gerard Kenny and his song ‘New York, New York ,so good they named it twice’.
So far I hadn’t spotted the legendary Beast of the Mendips. The panther like feline has never been photographed but has been seen many times. When I worked as a reporter for the local paper it was one of my favourite long running stories as it filled columns of eyewitness reports and speculation over whether it was a puma, bobcat of my favourite a Mountain Lion – as in the Rocky Mountains. I am sure it eyed me as I walked over the sloping hills to Kings Wood with its ancient trees and the drop down to Shute Shelve.
Shelve – there’s another old English word that has survived the language Nazis sub-editors I used to work with. They couldn’t abide words like ‘betwixt’ or ‘Faye’ or ‘knavish’ or indeed ‘Shelve’ which means steep hill and once a place of execution – now you feel like dying as you cycle up the A38. Below the road in the woods are various tracks and lost lanes follow the original slope but have been left to nature once the road was updated. Crossing the A38 and climbing up Winscombe Drove on the other side I wished I had taken an oxygen tank and preferably a Sherpa to carry my sandwiches.
The drove continues to Shipham where the path crosses a muddy field of even more muddier cattle, through a steep wooded valley and up to Templars Way. I can’t decide if the Knights Templars really did once trod this path or if the name was invented by a developer keen to make new homes in the lane sound more historic. I thought of those knights trudging up the path by fenced off mine shafts, spoil heaps and paddocks for ponies and wondered if they realised how far Jerusalem was from there. Wells was far enough – so perhaps some of the less dedicated settled for the cathedral city and the welcome hospitality of the Bishop’s Palace with its pints of mead, hot meals and clean toilets.
‘…several dogs growled and barked at me. ‘They don’t like your coat,’ she said’
The forest of Rowberrow Warren spreads out like an arboreal cloak on the hills and instead of deer or wild boar there were grown men on mountain bikes making the footpaths even more muddier. Eventually I came out on a path leading up to Blackdown moor – where a woman riding a horse passed me. I stood to one side to let her pass and the horse stopped and snorted. “He doesn’t like your coat,” she said and trotted on.
Blackdown is famous for the fake city built during World War 2 to trick the Luftwaffe into thinking it was Bristol at night. Obviously in the day it would have fooled nobody but with a series of bonfires and lights it could be mistaken from a passing bomber. I found one of the bunkers but couldn’t discover any bomb craters and wondered what sort of a war did the fire officers lead up on Blackdown. They would have been waiting all day for darkness and as soon as they heard explosions, sirens or gunfire they set out from their bunker with a box of matches for their night’s work. I would have volunteered to do it – a bit safer than landing on a Normandy beach under machine gun fire.
There’s no evidence the rouse worked although the idea was taken up across the country during the war as decoys by other cities – and it has been estimated if only the odd German bomber was fooled several hundred lives could have been saved. And on Blackdown they even laid out the street pattern with the area around Bristol Temple Meads railway station and the docks in lights as though bombs had been dropped using the whole area of the vast hill. Which meant the fire starters had a hike every night with a box of matches in hand and hoped it didn’t rain.
There are numerous tumulus or burial mounds dating to the stone age on Blackdown and across the Mendips including henges suggesting the hill tops were well populated thousands of years ago. Now we put up mobile phone masts and Television aerials instead – and as far as I’m aware nobody buries their dead in burial mounds anymore. Well let’s hope so. As for the aerials – across the ether the music of Shakira and Schumann is transmitted along with old editions of Dad’s Army or the newer Race Across the World – all unseen by the roe deer grazing in the fields below the masts on Raines Batch by the Romano British amphitheatre.
On the far side of the hill near the amphitheatre there’s the site of a long lost town. The Romans like the Celtic tribes before them were great miners – digging out lead, silver, tin, iron ore, ochre and even coal – and anything else they could find. Although they used slaves to do the hard part. Alongside the mines and huge pits around Blackmoor was a town complete with villas and shops for the population that grew up around the mines. The Romans even built a fort overlooking it all – now just a field with a few lumps and bumps that reveal where once chariots and togas were to be seen.
It must have been rather chilly for them up there as it was sleeting when I past the lost place of first century wealth and poverty. Turning my back on Blackmoor the path took me across fields of sheep and then down a stony path to the delightfully named Velvet Bottom. Visions of well upholstered female opera singers comes to mind but sadly no visions of beauty but more old mine workings – those Romans were busy gouging out earthworks for their precious metals – but so were the generations who followed – as they went through the spoil heaps to reprocess the slag with improved techniques – adding a Medieval population of miners to the area more generations of industrialists who continued digging up the Mendips – and over the hill quarrying continues near Cheddar.
Speaking of which the path follows the top of Cheddar Gorge along a mix of woodland and heathland. A woman passed me on the rocky path with several dogs who growled and barked at me. “They don’t like your coat,” she said.
‘I tried to intervene in a knife fight between two women’
The most testing part of the West Mendip Way followed due to the mud, the near vertical slopes and impossibly slippery surface as it descends to the outskirts of Cheddar and then up again towards Draycott Sleights. Ah – another old English word – for steep hill – the sub-editor spelling fanatics have failed to erase. The Draycott Sleights is a nature reserve and a hill overlooking the Levels and featuring some very suspicious black cows that took one look at me and galloped away. Perhaps they didn’t like my coat.
I crossed Draycott Hill road – possibly the steepest hill in England – and continued up and across a series of vast fields climbing neat stone stiles built into the drystone walls until I arrived in Priddy. By then it was snowing – on a summer’s day Priddy Green is the perfect spot to lie down having had several pints of cider at the nearby pub. And it was the scene of a narrow escape from angry gypsies some years before at the now banned Priddy Sheep Fair. Confusing, as the only livestock there for sale were horses that year – and it was where I tried to intervene in a knife fight between two women.
Surrounded by a group of men who should have known better and who were cheering on the women in what was quickly turning into a scene or extreme violence I stepped forward saying, ‘I say ladies, please stop.’ At that point they fell into a stall selling horse bridles creating even more confusion as the contents crashed to the ground. Linda grabbed my elbow and said, ‘No – come on or they’ll kill you.’ I turned to see some very aggressive men moving towards me – with murder in their eyes. I wanted to say, ‘hold me back,’ but instead made a quick exit as Linda dragged me away whilst pushing our pram which possibly helped the men to hesitate and let us leave.
‘That would have to wait for another time as quite frankly I was knackered.’
From Priddy there’s a series of paths which eventually come out on the edge of Ebbor Gorge – that Ice Age wooded valley untouched for centuries with its moss covered fallen trees, thick undergrowth and towering rocky cliffs. I could see the hunter gatherers from thousands of years ago using the caves as their base having first shooed away the sabre toothed tigers and bears and sauntering out in search of wild honey, apples and hopefully a wild boar happy to be their dinner. What they were not to know in the future is that just a few miles away there is a supermarket selling wild boar steaks, apples and honey. Which is where I was heading next since Wells and the end of the West Mendip Way was now in sight at the viewpoint above Ebbor Gorge.
The path through the gorge is incredibly steep and I found myself grabbing hold of branches for support as I descended down to the floor of the gorge, to look in awe at the tangle of ferns and dwarf oaks where somewhere in the green jungle were the caves. No hunter gatherers to be seen – just an elderly couple who asked me if I knew where the car park was. Which was odd since I assumed they had just walked from there as the exit from the gorge was through a very muddy field where some very muddy horses stood looking bored.
Wookey Hole was a short walk from the field of fed up muddy horses – and from the quiet of the gorge and the hills above it was very busy with visitors to the caves and museum buying ice creams despite the near freezing conditions. It is also where the River Axe comes out – before its journey to Uphill.
I had struggled on the steep stony and muddy paths – coming a cropper several times falling into the brambles and tangled undergrowth – so it was a pleasant change to be walking on a pavement – making short work of the walk into the cathedral city where I bought a meal deal at Tesco’s. Afterwards I walked to the far side of Wells where by an entrance to a wood there was a sign: The East Mendip Way. That would have to wait for another time as quite frankly I was knackered.
The Correspondent
The Correspondent is an online magazine format published, written and edited by the journalist Harry Mottram. For more visit www.harrymottram.co.uk
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