Not the best photo of the Quantocks perhaps - but it was a winding valley bottom road and I had to just try and get a pic out of the car window . . .
Whilst our eldest daughter T was here with us, we decided to have a One Day Holiday, and go and check out the Quantocks, an area of Somerset we don't know very well, but is under consideration for relocating to. Unfortunately, on the day my husband wasn't feeling very well, and I was still recovering from the Pleurisy and an early start helped neither of us!
We stopped at Taunton to check out the town, never having been there, and to sign on with some estate agents, who promptly gave us a sheaf of property details, of which only two were remotely of interest. ("This is a lovely bungalow . . ." - we don't "do" bungalows! - and we were thinking, well, you might think it's lovely but we couldn't possibly comment . . .) We decided to do a drive by of the two cottages we DID like, and followed directions, leaving Taunton and heading what WE assumed was North, but they meant a different small side road and not the A358 and so we missed them entirely. I thought perhaps we could see them on the way back, and my OH agreed . . .
So we carried on driving along the A358 towards Watchet, and I saw a sign for West Bagborough, where Edward Thomas found spring (in his book "In Pursuit of Spring".) I said, "Oh look, West Bagborough - that's where Edward Thomas went," and my husband drove on by . . . I kept quiet.
We decided to have lunch near Kilve/East Quantoxhead, so we could look across at Wales. (Edward Thomas got to Kilve too . . .)
As you can see, not a SANDY beach! The land you can see beyond is Minehead.
But an interesting beach, with its layers and tilts.
Just to prove there is nothing new under the sun, this is the remains of a failed business enterprise to extract oil from shale . . .
Sorry, I missed a bit off the bottom of the board.
The chantry is right next door to - and once served - the Manor house (now a farmhouse serving cream teas). We stopped for a cup of tea, but all the photos we took were on my daughter's camera, for some reason. An interesting place, and nice to think that ET had been here too!
Then we drove on to Nether Stowey, famous for being the village where Coleridge lived for some years . . .
