A RUN ACROSS SOMERSET

SUMMARY OF RUN ACROSS SOMERSET

Distances.

Clifton Suspension Bridge            

Clevedon      11½      miles

Wells      25⅛      ”

Ilchester      17⅝      ”

Crewkerne      11      ”

Devon Border      12      ”

Total      77¼      miles

Roads.

No bad gradients except near Chard—1 in 8.

Surface: from Clifton to Ilchester, poor; Ilchester to Crewkerne, fair; Crewkerne to Border, extremely good.

I
A RUN ACROSS SOMERSET

To most of us the very thought of the West Country is full of enchantment. In this grey and strenuous island, where a man must move quickly if he would be warm, this is the nearest approach to a Lotus Land—a land of green hills and hollows all lapped in an emerald sea, a land where the breezes are sleepy and scented, and the flowers grow because they want to see the view, and the sunshine is really encouraging, and the very rain is soft and kind. Even here the weather has its moods; but they are all lovable, and in any case cannot touch our happy memories. We who are but wayfarers, and have chanced to see the sun shining on the blue distances of Dartmoor, and warming the little sandy coves of South Devon, and peering into the depths of the wooded valley of Lynmouth, and lighting up the dark granite of the Land’s End, may keep the remembrance of it unspoiled for ever. Like the figures on Keats’ Grecian Urn, our vision of sunny hours suffers no change. “For ever shalt thou love, and she be fair.”

Even in Somerset the spell begins to work. We feel at once there is no need for haste. We begin to loiter, and stray from the straight path, and saunter through the orchards of the “Summerland;” though all the time the thought of the Devon border is never absent from our minds.

Very slowly the car creeps over Clifton Suspension Bridge. The Avon, a long way below us, flows between its high red-and-white cliffs towards the Severn Sea, to whose sh