Accidentally Steve: Every County in England - Part 3: Somerset & Cornwall

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Every County in England - Part 3: Somerset & Cornwall

Three counties in one day yesterday felt rushed so I booked a few nights in a cheap hotel in Wookey Hole to explore Somerset.

Wookey Hole is home to a vast cave system which handily is right next to the hotel. It also appears to be home to a vast array of animatronics witches, dinosaurs and swarms of feral children. The caves have been turned into an exciting attraction for young families, but less exciting for grumpy solo travelers. I may give in and go to the caves eventually but for today I was heading back to the coast.

Leaving the rolling Mendip Hills I set out into the flat interior of the county. The Somerset Levels saw some of the worst flooding in living memory in 2014. A series of storms overwhelmed these low-lying lands and left them submerged for months. The council reassured the residents that the problem would be resolved but driving through today I felt that perhaps they hadn’t done quite enough as yet again the surrounding countryside had been transformed into a large lake and a team was busy trying to manoeuvre a giant pump to divert some of the deluge.

It didn’t take long until I was at Weston-Super-Mare where I’d meet a friend. Somerset has some magnificent coastlines, I was not at one of these! The coast at Weston-Super-Mare is not the first choice for a beach resort. Its promenade faces the Bristol Channel whose cold waters have one of the highest tidal ranges in the world, a full 43ft between high & low tides. The result is a complete absence of beach for part of the day, the remainder of the time a wide expanse of cloying mud & quicksand is revealed. Warning signs on the beach rattled in the bracing Atlantic breeze and I wondered why on earth the town was here.

The answer lays just a few blocks back from the sea. The arrival of the railway in the 1800s allowed the area to develop as a resort for the working classes of Bristol who were keen to escape the city for a seaside break. The arrival of nearby Bristol Airport spelled the end to Weston’s appeal. With extremely cheap flights to the Mediterranean why would anyone stay in a bleak windswept resort here? Well a few people clearly still do, we weren’t the only fools bumbling down the promenade. Despite its bleak appearance there were actually a fair few people still mingling about, although admittedly they did all resembled shell shocked zombies.

After an afternoon chatting and eating copious amounts of sticky ribs and wings with my friend the light had gone, in my opinion vastly improving the view from the promenade where now a vast stretch of lights twinkled on the horizon marking the Welsh coast opposite. By the time I got back to the hotel the swarms of children had gone but their parents were busy getting inebriated in the hotel bar. I retreated to my room for some relative peace and spread out the map to plan the next stage. Once again I’d barely scratched the surface of the county but it was time to move on again.

Jutting out like an extended trotter, Devon & Cornwall are the remaining counties of the far south-west of England to tick off before my route turns the corner and starts heading east.

Devon would be the logical next stop but for today I decided to leapfrog the county and go straight to Cornwall. Knowing I lacked enthusiasm for delving too far into Cornwall I decided to rush down there to just tick it off before returning to Devon for the night.

There is no denying that Cornwall is a beautiful place. Rugged hills, villages of stone cottages tumbling down towards the dazzling white beaches & turquoise sea. The county has a unique Celtic culture unlike anywhere else in England. It is a prime holiday destination for huge numbers of people, perhaps I should be showing more enthusiasm. My issue was one of convenience, everything about the place was designed to hamper a lengthy road trip. It is isolated, expensive and filled with narrow, slow roads. The Cornish have a word ‘Dreckly’ which sums up the locals attitude to life. It roughly means that something will get done without hurry, in its own time, kind of like the word ‘Mañana.’ Everything seems to operate under this principle, in a slow and bumbling way, everything that is except for driving. The locals seem to use the narrow lanes like their own personal race track, God help anyone driving on the correct side of the road at a low speed! My compromise was to nip over the border and find a supermarket. That way I could tick off the county without spending hours lost in the claustrophobic lanes.

Just a few miles over the border the former capitol Launceston fit the bill. The small town is perched on a hill overlooking the River Tamar, topped with a ruined Norman castle. I parked up opposite the castle gates and set out to explore. In typical British fashion the car next to me contained a happy family having a picnic. I wanted to see something more scenic than the car park wall so I left the car and walked up to the castle, unsurprisingly it was shut until March. Outside a group of teenagers had assembled to stare in silence at their phones, one was vigorously brushing his teeth using the water from a puddle. I can’t explain this, perhaps it’s a Cornish tradition, perhaps I’m just getting old and had lost touch with the youth. Either way I left. Spreading out from the castle the town has an unmistakable Cornish character. The tumbling buildings clinging to the hillside, jostling for space along the narrow cobblestone lanes. I imagine in the summer this town is packed with people but today I had it nearly to myself. Everything was shut and there were very few signs of life.

I was satisfied that I’d seen enough of Cornwall for one day. Despite having not actually seen much Devon was calling and I needed to pick up the pace. It was clear that Cornwall is closed in January, would Devon be any better?