Somerset Scenes

I never, ever take a break in August but this year as in so much else normal practice has been put to one side, and this week I've have had my first bit of leave since January. Not long ago my sister and her family had a trip to Glastonbury and that reminded me that I haven't been there for years, even since Archangel Janet and Mal Friday from London Gothic moved there a little while ago, so I went on Wednesday. But not just to Glastonbury: there were a couple of stops first.

These included the Nine Springs at Yeovil, now a Country Park but once part of the Aldon estate centred on the big house on top of the hill, Aldon, or Aewelldune originally, the 'hill of the great spring'. The ornamental walk centred on the stream flowing around the base of the hill was laid out in the early 19th century and was regularly opened up to the public throughout its history until it was - in a curious phrase which leaves the nature of the transaction open to question - 'secured from the Batten family' by the Borough of Yeovil in 1928. I found it busy with families and dogwalkers, making their way to and fro around the walkways, arches, stepping stones, grottoes and cascades. It is not quite a Gothic Garden, but more a fairy dell, I suppose, and that seems to be how children view it.

My sister was kind enough to buy me a year's membership of the National Trust for my birthday and so far I hadn't used it at all, so although you can't go in it at present, lunch at Montacute House was an ideal opportunity to do so.

On the other side of Montacute village is the early 19th-century St Michael's Tower on a small, steep wooded hill, the site of a medieval castle. Headley & Meulenkamp in Follies say you shouldn't take the steep path up the hill unless you have crampons: it was all right going up, but coming down I had to grab a stick to help me and proceed very gingerly indeed. Of course the tower does not really lean at the angle my camera suggests, or at any angle in fact.

In Glastonbury I hurried round the sites I hadn't seen in 25 years at least. The Abbey is better organised now, with a smart visitor centre and museum, the most moving item being the funeral pall made out of a cope which once belonged to Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, hanged on the Tor for refusing to accept the Royal Supremacy over the Church.

The Chalice Well hasn't changed much at all, although I remember a time when hardly anyone seemed to go there. People still seem to manage to meditate among the laughing children jumping in and out of the streams - and people taking photographs.

How I made it up and down the Tor in heat that was into the mid-30s I'm not sure. I had a full bottle of water from the Chalice Well, that must have been it. An hour with Janet and Mal and two hours' drive home and I could barely think!