Laud of the Ring WORDS: Hanna Lindon PHOTOGRAPHY: Steve Morgan
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Ramblers Route in depth Laud of the Ring WORDS: Hanna Lindon PHOTOGRAPHY: Steve Morgan A decade in the making by local Ramblers, the Mendip Ring encompasses the area’s nest natural wonders and remnants of its colourful past. We walked the highest section of this new long-distance trail, where an extraordinary World War II decoy still lurks in the hill-top grass cattered across the heather- part of the Mendips to draw fi re away wreathed slopes of Black Down, from the South West’s largest city. the highest point in the Mendip The turfed-over remains of the Black Hills, is a series of grassy Down bombing decoy are just a small hummocks. At fi rst glance, you part of the colourful past of Somerset’s Smight easily mistake these mysterious Mendip area. It was with the ambition of bulges for ancient barrows or signs of showcasing these heritage highlights that walk it! the Roman lead workings that once the Mendip Ramblers created the Mendip TIME/DISTANCE: The full Mendip Ring is decorated Somerset’s history-rich uplands. Ring – a 188km/117-mile long-distance 188km/117 miles long and takes between But Black Down’s man-made mounds path that traces the boundaries of the area, nine and 15 days to complete, depending are really a much more recent addition from Cheddar and Glastonbury Tor in the on your fi tness level. It begins at Ashcott to the landscape. west to Frome and Bruton in the east. Corner, and recommended breakdowns Had you been in a German bomber “Most of Mendip is a microcosm of the are detailed on the Mendip Ring website circling over the Bristol Channel during the rest of the country,” says Margaret Nuth, (see below). The walk in this feature last bitter years of World War II, you would who was the historical and archaeological covers leg 8a, between Burrington Combe have seen what looked like a city on the researcher for the route. “As you walk the and Rodney Stoke, which is 13½km/8½ edge of the Somerset Levels. There were Mendip Ring, you’re going backwards and miles and takes approximately 4 hours streets and railways picked out in fl ickering forwards in history all the time. Every few to complete. lights, and dim red pinpricks that might DISTANCE: OS Explorer 141; have been the stoking of steam Landranger 182. locomotives. On a dark night, this FURTHER INFO: www.mendipring.org.uk Clockwise from above: enjoying the view from luminous map would have looked very the trig point at Beacon Batch, the summit of much like an aerial view of Bristol. In Black Down and the highest point of the Mendip ROUTE reality, though, it was a sophisticated decoy Hills; stunning scenery to admire on the way up Ramblers Routes to Beacon Batch; walking up to Beacon Batch; Britain’s best walks from the experts 09 town operated from underground bunkers a Mendip Ring marker added to a public and strategically positioned in this lonely footpath waymark 60 walk autumn 2014 60-65 WALK44 RRID.indd 60 12/08/2014 11:44 walks mendip ring yards your footfall is going from Tudor England to the Industrial Revolution and Legend has it Augustus Montague Toplady was back again to the time of the Normans.” inspired to write the 18th-century hymn Rock of Ages But the Mendip Ring isn’t just a walk through time – it’s a colourful compilation while sheltering under a rock in Burrington Combe of the West Country’s scenic high points. The route takes in the ethereal landscape of the Levels and moors, the green folds of Mendip Ring marker. Legend has it that “It was Bob Berry [MBE], the leader of Glastonbury Tor, and a line of golden-bricked the fabulously monikered Augustus our work party, who first came up with the Somerset villages in nine spectacular Montague Toplady was inspired to write idea of a ring round the boundaries of sections. With only a day to spare for the popular 18th-century hymn Rock of Mendip,” Mike told me. “So we started exploring this new long-distance walk, Ages while sheltering under a rock in off with a map, drew a circle around though, I made a beeline for the lushest Burrington Combe – and it certainly feels Mendip and tried to find footpaths that and most dramatically contoured leg of like a place that could ‘save from wrath matched the border as closely as possible. the Mendip Ring, beginning at a lay-by and make me pure’. I dawdled briefly Our working party convenes most Tuesday overlooking the steep limestone sides of above the gorge, admiring the divine view, mornings, and when we didn’t have other Burrington Combe. before following the marker (blue-arrowed work to do, we went out and mapped and stickers added to the regular public signposted the Ring.” Luminescent limestone country footpath waymarkers) north towards the Mike described the section I was walking Whenever you see grass so green that it’s brooding bulk of Black Down. that day as one of his favourite parts of almost luminescent, you can be pretty Talking earlier to Mike Plaskitt, one the Ring, partly because of the knockout sure you’re in limestone country. of the leading forces behind the creation views from Beacon Batch atop Black Burrington Combe glowed psychedelically of the Mendip Ring, I’d learnt that all of Down. On a clear day, you can stand on in the mid-morning sunlight as I left the car these markers were placed by volunteers the summit of the Mendips’ highest point, and searched among the foliage, frothing from the Mendip Ramblers working party and sweep your eye round from Bristol over the top of the gorge, for the first after several years of concerted planning. and the sluggish curves of the Severn www.ramblers.org.uk/walkmag autumn 2014 walk 61 60-65 WALK44 RRID.indd 61 12/08/2014 11:45 walks mendip ring Monmouth uprising (an attempt to There are signs of the major events in our history: overthrow James II in 1685), but it does offer the most glorious bird’s-eye views the indigenous people, the Roman and Norman down onto the Somerset Levels – an area invasions, Black Death, Reformation, industrialisation... that would have been swimming in several feet of water last winter, but now basks serenely in the golden summer sunshine. Estuary to Weston-super-Mare glittering in just dating them that’s the problem. The walk sticks to summits and ridgelines the distance and the shadowy hills of “If you walk the whole Ring, you’ll find for most of its duration, dipping down only Exmoor beyond. signs of most of the major events in the to follow the floor of another deep combe With its waving purple moor grasses and history of our country,” says Margaret. into the centre of Cheddar Gorge. scattering of spiky gorse bushes, Beacon “You’ve got the early indigenous people, I stopped here to wolf down my Batch has more in common with Exmoor the Roman and Norman invasions, sandwich and admire the wild goats than it does with the green cleft of the Black Death, the Reformation, grazing the steep sides of the gorge with Burrington Combe or the lush hills that industrialisation and the two wars. There gravity-defying ease. A group of white- roll south towards Cheddar. The smell of are three things that are unique to this faced cavers passed us, probably off to crushed heather and peaty soil warmed by area, though: one is the Levels and explore the river-forged tunnels, where the sun followed me as I turned reluctantly Moors; the second is a man-made feature, Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton, away from the trig point and began the Glastonbury Abbey, which seems to hang gentle descent to the road at Charterhouse. in the public psyche; and the third is the En route, I passed a line of intriguing Monmouth Rebellion, which affected Clockwise from top left: a view en route from Burrington Combe to Beacon Batch; trig point mounds that might equally have been a lot of people in Somerset.” at Beacon Batch; walking down from Beacon relics of the decoy town or part of Black Batch; out of Long Wood and through a high Down’s Bronze Age round barrow Golden gorges and cider pasture; in the National Trust land of Black Rock at the top of Cheddar Gorge; through cemetery. The ghosts of history are My route doesn’t visit Glastonbury Abbey a meadow with limestone dry-stone walls; everywhere you turn on this walk – it’s or touch on the areas affected by the crossing a stile in Long Wood www.ramblers.org.uk/walkmag autumn 2014 walk 63 60-65 WALK44 RRID.indd 63 31/07/2014 15:48 walks mendip ring Cheddar Man, was discovered back in 1903. Tourists in walking boots pootled Rodney Stoke is a ‘Thankful Village’ – one happily up and down the path, a reminder that this was the first time that day I’d met of the few communities in Britain that lost none other walkers. Still, as I shook off that of their inhabitants in the First World War soporific post-lunch feeling with a bracing climb up Cheddar Cliffs, the tourists were quickly left behind. Soon it was just me jelly-mould shape of Glastonbury Tor, a Mendip Ring: about the Levels beneath breathing in the sun-soaked views – give site as wreathed in pagan spirituality as it Glastonbury, Wookey with its magical or take a few curious cows.