Walking with Coleridge and Wordsworth

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or so the saying goes. So what makes a view beautiful? Who says that a hilltop panorama, a leafy glade, an open moor, a bubbling brook or gently rolling fields are beautiful? Actually our ideas of what makes the natural landscape picturesque have been quite strongly influenced by how people have written about them in literature.

In the late 1790s, the Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth spent a year in the Quantocks, getting inspiration for many of their most famous works from their walks in this lovely area.

This walk takes you in their footsteps, visiting many of the valleys and woods, streams and waterfalls, hilltops and viewpoints that they explored. See just what inspired them. Discover how some aspects of the landscape have changed and others have not changed in the last two hundred years. Uncover evidence of human activity in a landscape that looks natural. And think about what makes a view beautiful. 

Walk Info

Distance:

7 miles

Level:

Hilly with several steep ascents and descents

Suitable for:

Dogs should be kept on a lead on grazing land

Region:

South West England

Setting:

Countryside

Landscape:

People in the landscape Preserving the landscape Exploiting the landscape

Start:

Holford village

Finish:

Holford village

Getting there:

On the A39 between Bridgewater and Minehead

Served by buses running between Bridgewater and Minehead; one bus every 2 hours

Nearest station Bridgwater (11 miles)